


Ouroboros

by nyxocity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Antichrist, M/M, Sibling Incest, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:35:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 59,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S2 AU. Sammy died when Dean was nine. Sixteen years later, he's the last Winchester alive, and hunting a man who's supposed to be the Antichrist. But when he meets Sam Harrison face to face, he can't pull the trigger. They go on the run from the other hunters together, discover a bond they can't quite explain, become a team and more. By the time all the secrets between them are revealed, it's too late to go back, and the Antichrist has risen. The world is ending and Dean's the only one who can stop it--if he's willing to give up everything he never thought he'd have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Close to the Edge

**Close to the Edge**

A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace,  
And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace,  
And achieve it all with music that came quickly from afar,  
Then taste the fruit of man recorded losing all against the hour.  
And assessing points to nowhere, leading ev'ry single one.  
A dewdrop can exalt us like the music of the sun,  
And take away the plain in which we move,  
And choose the course you're running. 

Down at the edge, round by the corner,  
Not right away, not right away. 

~Close to the Edge I, The Solid Time of Change, by Yes 

 

He stands before the gate, his hands fitted against the metal wheel. The air around him feels cold by comparison, even now in early summer, and the metal is hot against his skin, his palms sweating against it. 

There’s movement behind him, a voice, people who will try to stop him. It doesn’t matter. 

He moves as a shot rings out in the air, sound suspended alone for a split second. Stillness, calm before the storm, and then reality splits like a gaping maw. The door flies open and an army of demons spew from the fissure, slither and caper on trails of smoke, bind into a solid mass of black with a deafening roar. Demons glide and whirl against each other amidst the screams of the tormented, pouring out in a ceaseless tide.

The skin of this world still understands the words of a ritual that had been old even in Lucifer’s time. Guttural language falls from his lips as he raises his arms to the sky, and it crackles and splits with lightning, throws illumination and shadows in odd shapes. 

He hears a name shouted in the distance, stutters over the sounds that spill from his mouth. He knows that name, that voice. _Dean_. Memory serves up a face and he shoves it away. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing else matters now.

This is his gift, after all. His birthright.

The demons whirl, black tornado rising around him, and his mouth splits open in a smile.

He chants.

 

*

 

_Six months ago…_

The winter is bitter cold here in Baltimore, even more so in this land of concrete, past where the highway ends, in the graveyard of industrial buildings.

Dean hates it. It’s ugly here, ugly and slow with rot. His dad would have called it “honest”, but then, John Winchester always did have a penchant for sarcasm.

He’s inside a factory where they used to bottle something once, either that or make glass judging by the amount of broken pieces shattered and scattered everywhere, a myriad of colorful shards. The basement floor is covered with them, four concrete walls and the stench of decay, no way out. This is not a good place to be.

Ground level is made of sturdy wood planking, lots of windows and doorways still half boarded over. There’s plenty of shattered glass here, too, enough that he’ll hear someone coming.

It’s as good a place as any to make a stand. He should probably care more that it might be his last.

He’s got a photograph, in the worn leather wallet he keeps in his back pocket, faded scrap of a thing with a little boy’s face. Boy with dark, shaggy hair and bright hazel eyes, smile that could break your heart. He doesn’t look at it anymore; he doesn’t have to. He knows every shade and color, the part of the little boy’s hair, the way it falls and curls. Every white-lined crease in the photo paper, earned with years of wanting. 

Sometimes, when he flips through his wallet in a diner, or a grocery store, some well-meaning woman will spot it and smile. Ask if it’s his son. It hits him like an arrow through the heart, every time, realizing that he’s more than old enough to be Sammy’s dad, now. That’s it’s been _that_ long since he’s been gone.

Gone. That’s how he thinks of it. And now Dad’s gone, too. It’s been almost a year, but the pain’s still fresh, like a new discovery every time he stumbles across it.

Sometimes, in the night, when he’s desperate for something to hold onto, his mind serves up that memory of Dad, lying peaceful in the hospital bed. They both knew the consequences of this life; that their family would end one day. But at least he died quiet, in bed, not burning and screaming for help.

There’s a picture of Dad in his wallet, too, tucked further back, behind the white scraps of business cards, crinkled diner receipts. He put it in there the day after the funeral, and he’s never gone looking for it since. There’s dog tags with his dad’s name nestled in a box somewhere deep in the trunk of the Impala, and he never goes looking for them, either.

He drives the Impala now, passenger seat always empty. Motels with double beds bother him, sheets unturned, no steady snoring to ease him into sleep. Rooms with single beds are harder to come by, but when he finds them, they’re no comfort, either. They don’t erase the empty space his dad left in his life. And sometimes—even now--when he’s walking down the street, or sitting in a restaurant, he’ll hear a kid laugh or cry and turn suddenly, the sound so much like a memory of Sam.

He doesn’t need photos, or memoirs. He doesn’t need to be reminded of what he had, once. He knows.

He carries the weight of their loss with him every day.

Kneeling here, on the floor of this gutted factory--broken glass scattered everywhere around him, heart thudding dully in his chest, sheen of cold sweat covering his skin--he thinks of those pictures, wonders who will know them when he’s gone. 

A boot heel crunches against brittle glass, thin sound as it splinters, echoes off the walls. He tightens his grip on his gun and rises to his feet. Feels something like relief as he sees her emerge from the shadows.

“Come on, Dean,” Ruby says, savage twist of her cold mouth, glittering cobra eyes. Her feet grind against the factory glass, bursts of tiny thunder cracks in Dean’s ears. Colt held hard in his grip, he stares down the barrel at her, takes a slow step back.

“You’re not afraid of little old me, now are you?” she asks. Rich honey blond hair and blue eyes, sharp as a knife’s edge, the way they hold him. She’d be pretty, if she wasn’t such a bitch.

Sweat trickles down his back, cold and tickling as it slides the curve of his spine. She follows his step with one of her own, menacing little sway of her hips. “Dean,” she says with false cheer, canting her head to the side. Moonlight streams in between the boards nailed across the old factory windows, and her eyes glitter with it, cold and hard. They settle on the gun and then climb back to his face.

“I’m not here to fight,” she says, lifting her hands.

“Then you came to the wrong place,” Dean says. Takes a quick breath, eases back another step.

“You give me what I want,” she says, voice low and deadly, “and you get to keep your guts inside your body. I don’t get covered in gore and you live, everybody goes home happy.” Her crimson mouth drawn up in a tight smirk, one shoulder shrugging inside an ox blood colored jacket.

Dean hesitates, feels his heartbeat in his ears, pulse pounding a hammering beat. A bead of sweat drips down his brow, blinds him, and he blinks it out, never takes his eyes from her.

“What do you want?” he asks. Words thick, given with a genuine curiosity he wishes he could take back the second it leaves.

She smiles like a lazy lion as she advances on him. “You know what I want, Dean.” Every syllable drawn out, exquisitely pronounced. “The knife your psycho Jesus freak buddy stole from me back in Wisconsin.”

She lifts her arm, clutch of her fingers to reach for him, and he steps back quickly, glass grating under his heel. 

“Look.” Roll of her eyes, recalcitrant slant of her shoulders, eyes calculating, like she’s tallying up the ones and zeroes as she stares him down. And still there’s a sultry set to her mouth, like something about this is sexy. “I promise I won’t kill you.”

Dean’s foot shuffles back another step, scuffles over sharp edges, mind making note of his paces. “Right,” he says. “Because I’m special.”

The floorboards creak with her weight as she moves another step. “You’re—”

Sudden stop as she senses it—too late. She sighs, lengthy and burdened over her folded arms, eyes bright blue and baleful. “Devil’s Trap?” she asks, as if it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

“Gotcha.”

Roll of her eyes heavenward to see the chalked outline above her head. She shifts hard inside her jacket, mutters something under her breath that sounds like “goddamned amateurs”. 

“Oh, come on, Ruby,” Dean says, straightening. His heart slowing, voice wry, edge of a sarcastic smile on his face. “Aren’t you gonna tell me how _special_ I am?”

“Would it do any good?” she snaps. “You even _have_ any goals in life besides following that Norman-Bates-wannabe around?”

“Killing things like you,” Dean says, eyeing her calmly down the barrel. 

“Yeah? Well maybe you should stop and ask a question every now and then, Arnold.” 

Venom in the lash of her voice, and Dean smiles, takes it like a reward. He looks her up and down, shrugs one shoulder without moving the rest of his body. “Okay,” he says as he cocks the gun. “Head? Or heart?” 

“Cute,” she says, like he really isn’t. “You know what the scary part is, Dean?” Brittle amusement dancing in those eyes as they size him up. “In this little band of merry hunters? You’re actually the _sane_ one.”

Dean tightens his finger on the trigger. “Where is he?” 

Taut, hard grin, toss of golden hair over her shoulder. “Who? Sam?” she asks, voice rich with sarcasm. “What? You gonna kill him, too?”

“That’s the plan,” he nods.

Her face changes, suddenly, instantly. She looks so human, trapped and caught and trying so hard to be brave. “I’m not what you think, Dean.” She searches his eyes, something frail shining through, and despite what Dean knows—despite _everything_ he knows – he feels his throat catch. “And neither is he.”

She takes a breath, opens her mouth, like she’s going to say something else. He waits for the words, but there’s nothing. Then, a burst of light pops inside her skull like a flash bulb illuminating bone through skin. White light tinged with red leaps from her mouth, leaks from her eye sockets, strange and eerily silent. 

Dean takes another step back, heart trip hammering, fingers twitching against the Colt. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. This wasn’t part of the plan, and if she’s playing him, then he’s a goner, because he really believes she’s dying—

And then she’s falling through the air, boneless body landing with a thump and a spill of honey-blond hair over his feet.

He switches in his stance and steps back a pace.

Gordon’s standing there, figure cut from light and shadow, primitive looking dagger in one hand, cold satisfaction in his eyes. He looks like a murderer, madness captured in the flat glitter of his eyes. He looks like a God.

Gordon just fucking stabbed her in the back—probably just fucking _killed_ her. And he ought to be relieved, ought to be happy she’s gone after all these months of cat and mouse. Oily, calculating smile, the half-truths and lies she spewed, just enough to keep stringing him along.

He should be glad. 

Dean clears his throat, tries to think past the adrenaline still pounding in his blood. “What? You couldn’t wait another thirty seconds to hear what she had to say?”

Gordon makes a sound like a laugh, flicks his eyes up to Dean, slow and easy. “Not like she would have told us anything.”

Dean swallows, knows it’s true, even if he wants to argue. “Is she..?”

Gordon crouches down like a predator, rests his elbows on his knees. Touches two fingers to her throat and smiles. “As a doornail,” he says. His voice is steady, but rich with satisfaction, and not for the first time Dean thinks there’s something about it that’s not quite human. 

Cold; empty; lost in the grip of obsession. 

_You’re the one following this guy. Oh, Dean, let’s count the ways you need therapy._

_Let’s start with your father._

_Let’s not._

“And the demon inside her?” Dean asks, not loosening his grip on his gun.

“Dead, too.” Gordon’s smile is sharp in the dim light, and it sits wrong on his face. An imitation of the real thing, mimicry. He holds up the dagger in the moonlight, thin line of light catching along its edge. Kubrick materializes out of the darkness behind Gordon, stupid smile spread over his face. “We finally got her.”

She’s dead. There’s nothing to be done for it, girl’s body bleeding out innocent blood at his feet.

“Ding dong, the bitch is dead,” Dean mutters. He wipes the sweat from his face, holsters the gun in the waistband of his jeans, nestled at the small of his back.

“This is… this is a good sign.” Kubrick stumbles over words like a coffee table in the dark. It’s an amazing stroke of good fortune, depending on which side you’re standing on, and Dean gets that—not like Lady Luck’s _ever_ fucked _his_ brains out before—but he can’t stop the feeling of fear spreading through his chest, tingling down his spine. The cold dread in his lungs.

“We did it,” Kubrick gasps. “We killed the demon. That means we can--”

“Exactly,” Gordon says, cutting him off. He thumbs the edge of the blade, stares at it like it holds all the answers to the universe. He leaps to his feet, quick and fluid, like a cat, shoves the knife through his belt. “Gentlemen,” he says, regarding them with a smile that makes Dean’s skin crawl, “tonight, we celebrate.”

Kubrick laughs, sounds almost mystified and somehow gratified all at once. Gordon moves past Dean, brushing warmth that pulses against Dean like a sickness, pats Dean’s shoulder in a quick gesture.

When he was little, Dean used to read stories to Sammy, his brother’s little body tucked into motel beds, fingers curled at the edges of the blanket, pulled up to his neck, hazel eyes wide and round, so huge.

_“Inside the arena, there stood two doors, side by side, exactly alike in every way. Behind one waited a beautiful lady, a reward if he was true. But behind the other, there waited a terrible tiger, ready to eat him.”_

_What did he pick?_ Sammy would always ask. And Dean would just shrug, crawl into bed next to his brother’s warm body. Curl up close and murmur his answer.

_The one that felt right._

_But how did he know?_

Dean still doesn’t have an answer for that. 

He stands there, stares at Ruby’s body a moment longer, fingers brushing away the sensation where Gordon touched him.

*

Lynyrd Skynyrd echoes off the walls of the Harvelle roadhouse, blaring tinny and slightly shrill from the overtaxed, out-of-date jukebox. It’s a seedy dive, like dozens they’ve been in before—like hundreds Dean has been to, all his life—and they all play the same music. It’s strangely comforting to Dean, like slipping into his old, worn-in leather jacket, or sliding into the fitted seat of the Impala.

Ellen cleans the bar with a wet rag for the fifth time in an hour, brown eyes flickering to Dean every now and then when she thinks he’s not looking. Jo looks at him less—glides between the tables, serves beer to rugged old men in flannel with her patented glowering anger—and he’s glad for that. He knows what they both think. They’d both warned him months ago about crazy Gordon Walker and his even crazier sidekick. 

But if it weren’t for Gordon Walker and said crazy sidekick, Dean wouldn’t even be sitting here right now. The vampire behind the bar that night in South Carolina would have had him-- _did_ have him—drunk and stupid and senseless, splayed out on the gravel in the parking lot. 

“You shouldn’t have run off alone, Dean,” Gordon says. 

“Thought I might get more out of her alone,” he shrugs.

“Coulda got you killed.”

Dean shrugs at that, too. “But it didn’t. I trapped her.”

“And Gordon finished it,” Kubrick adds.

“Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday,” Dean says, lifting his bottle of beer, grinning at his own cleverness. He’s feeling a lot better now that the deed is done and they’ve got some distance on it. 

“We got his demon bitch,” Gordon says, slow and satisfied.

Dean nods, takes another drink. “Now we just gotta get the man, himself.”

“He’s not a man,” Gordon says, eyes sharp.

“Right, Antichrist. Whatever,” Dean shrugs.

Kubrick frowns at him from across the table. “Don’t make light of what you don’t understand,” he says seriously, staring at Dean. And his eyes could bore a hole right through him, if Dean cared. But Dean’s had quite a few beers tonight, and he’s not much with the caring at this point, Kubrick being a pack member notwithstanding.

“My friend here may be a little… fanatical,” Gordon allows, glancing archly at Kubrick. “But this guy we’re after _is_ the Antichrist, Dean,” Gordon says, those scary eyes of his flat as they settle on Dean. “Sooner you start believing that, the better off we’ll all be.”

“Right,” Dean says and sets down his empty bottle. “Sam Harrison, former Stanford student, Antichrist at large. Got it.” Dean doesn’t pay too much attention to the details. He’s never been very good with research, and Gordon really is, especially when it comes to his favorite subject of all time, the Antichrist.

“We’re angels,” Kubrick says in all seriousness, hands wrapped around his glass of Coke.

“Long as we’re not Charlie’s Angels,” Dean says, deadpanning right back.

Five months as part of their little team, the first thing he found after dad died, people who understood _him_. At least in principle. He’s been with them long enough to know their moves, their means and ways. Kubrick, he’s a fruitcake—which is a lot more honest than most people, in Dean’s opinion, and a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Guy like Kubrick, you know what to expect. Mission from God, yadda yadda, insert platitude and bible scripture here. He’s got a plan, even if it’s fucked backwards like a fox. Gordon’s the one he still can’t get a handle on. 

Or maybe it’s that he can, and he just doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

Gordon is like dad, mirrored in every angry move and every strategic response, and Dean would be an idiot not to see that. But it’s what he knows. It’s _all_ he knows. 

And if he doesn’t always agree… well, he didn’t like what he saw in dad sometimes, either.

He’d had a father once, a man, a compass to guide him through his path in life, tell him what to do and where to stand. And if he was raised a soldier, then who can blame him for still being one? For holding tight every bit of his conditioning? 

Jo slams a beer down on the table next to him, grabs the empties and avoids his eyes. He toasts Kubrick, symbol of peace with his fresh beer, and clinks bottles with Gordon. Toasts to the hunt.

It’s what he does. 

And after all… it’s all he’s got.

“What’d you do to piss her off, Dean?” Gordon asks when Jo’s a safe distance away.

“More like what I didn’t do,” Dean mutters. Gordon doesn’t seem to understand, but that’s okay, because Dean isn’t a hundred percent sure, himself. Sometimes he thinks maybe Jo was born angry at the whole world and he just happened to get in the way. 

His eyes follow her as she moves through the crowd, and she glances up, sees him looking before he can look away. Her shoulders rise and her eyes go hard, and if she was a dog, the hair on the back of her neck would be bristling right now. Dean knows a challenge when he sees one, but he’s walked that road before, knows where it ends, and he’s not looking for a fight. Not tonight.

Gordon’s watching him, looking mildly bemused by their exchange, and Dean just tilts his head, shrugs it off.

“So, we got any leads on the Antichrist?” 

“No,” Gordon sounds mildly disappointed, but there’s a smile creeping around the corners of his mouth. “But we got something else.”

“Yeah?”

“Man went missing down in West Virginia the other day. He was with a friend,” Gordon says. “Deaf friend, who swore the man said he heard a beautiful voice singing his name before he ran off into the woods. Hasn’t been seen since.”

“So what’re we thinking?” Dean asks, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “Harpy? Siren?”

“Siren,” Gordon agrees.

“Pretty deadly,” Dean says. “Sing a man right to his death. What’s the plan?”

“Ever heard of Homer?”

Dean blinks. “This isn’t gonna involve donuts, is it?”

*

Moonlight sifts through the trees, long, tall shadows of trunks and the sway of branches crisscrossing the ground. They creep through the underbrush, through the thickets and the windfalls in an ever-tightening circle. And there, near the center of their “net”, stands a log cabin.

Dean pulls the wad of wax from one of his ears, and tucks it behind the lobe, meeting Gordon’s eyes.

“That’s got to be it,” Gordon whispers, and Dean nods, tightens his grip on the Glock. 

The front porch is thick with shadow, and Dean can’t even see where the front door is, though he’d guess it’s directly in front of the sheets of slate that form a walkway up the center of the clearing. The sides of the cabin are bare save the windows, sightless eyes with curtains drawn. There’s a woodpile leaning against the back wall of the cabin, neat stacks, corded and piled so high they spill off the top, haphazard bundles scattered on the ground all around. And another door about ten paces from the pile, just before the corner. There’s a shed a couple yards back, but it’s clearly locked; nothing from the inside coming out of that.

Gordon gives a slow nod. “You take the front, I’ll get the back. Kubrick, you wait out here in case anybody comes running out that shouldn’t.”

“But what do I do?” Kubrick asks, looking worried.

Gordon arches a brow and turns to look at him like he might be slow. “You _shoot_ them.”

“But… what if they’re not a demon?”

“I didn’t say you had to kill them,” Gordon says. “I’d prefer you didn’t, actually. Just in case they _are_ a demon.” The smile he gives Kubrick sends chills down Dean’s spine. Dean stuffs the wax back into his ear, makes sure it’s snug and soundproof.

They creep through the dead grass, crouching low to the ground with their guns drawn. There isn’t much cover with the moon almost directly overhead, and Dean thinks if there’s anybody watching, he might as well paint a target on his forehead. Long minutes pass though, and nothing happens. He sets one foot on the porch, more tense than ever—whatever they’re looking for, if it’s under here he won’t be able to see it for the thirty or so seconds it takes his eyes to adjust, so he’s just gonna have to hope—

He does a forward roll onto the porch to stay in motion, comes up, cabin wall at his back, gun already moving, tracking a half-circle in front of him. His eyes adjust quickly, and he can make out shades in the darkness now, can’t see anything except the usual outdoor furniture, but there’s _something_ not right here, he feels it.

Once he’s inside they make a quick sweep of the house, knowing if the siren’s inside she’d be doing anything but hiding, trusting her voice to sing them right into submission. Kubrick joins them around the time Dean’s bent over the lock on the shed door.

“Can’t I just shoot it?” he mutters when the pick slips again.

“Only if you wanna bring her running.”

The pick catches and the tumbler finally turns. He yanks the lock free and stands back, toes it open with one foot. You never know—that’s one thing hunting has taught him. You just never fucking know when some creature of the night is gonna come snarling out of what seems like a perfectly normal closet/chest/footlocker.

Nothing snarls or leaps, and he kicks it all the way open.

There’s pile of dead bodies inside, in various states of decay, all male as far as Dean can see. At the top of them is a woman, long blond hair and what looks like a wood chopping axe buried in her chest.

“Christ,” Dean mutters. “You think she’s the siren?”

It’s a fairly fresh kill. She still looks almost perfect in the moonlight that hides the greenish cast Dean knows she must have to her skin.

“Got to be,” Gordon says, slow and thoughtful. “Considering all the other bodies are male. A siren wouldn’t bother trying to kill a female. They don’t dirty their hands that way. She’d just move on.”

“Then who..?”

“No way of knowing,” Gordon shrugs.

They circle back around to the front, make sure no one’s come up behind them.

“I saw some backpacks inside,” Kubrick says. “We should check ‘em out.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, nodding. “Probably belonged to all those poor shmucks in the shed.”

“Let’s make it quick,” Gordon says, gruff.

They’re through the living room, almost to the kitchen when Dean realizes Kubrick’s stopped moving beside him. Kubrick’s standing still as a post, jaw unhinged as he stares at the back door of the cabin.

Dean turns his head to look, and for a second, there’s nothing, just shadows and moonlight in splotches slung all over the walls. He blinks, and then he sees it. There’s a man there on the other side of the counter, silhouetted in the faint light of the moon through the gauzy curtains on the back door. As Dean sights him, the man pulls the door open, ducks low for cover behind the counters.

“What the fuck—” Dean starts.

“I saw his face. It’s… it’s him,” Kubrick gasps, and he hears Gordon inhale a sharp jag of breath behind him.

“Sam Harrison,” Dean murmurs.

“God’s will,” Kubrick whispers.

Dean doesn’t believe in God any more than he believes in the Antichrist. Antichrist is just another word for “evil”. Really, really _bad_ evil. And he might not believe in Kubrick’s holy quest, or Gordon’s righteous path, but he _does_ believe in killing some evil sons of bitches, and so he jumps over the counter, crashes through the half opened door and takes off running.

The guy is tall, long legs and huge feet carrying him across the ground at almost twice the rate Dean’s running. Dean urges his legs faster, ignores the pain in his right side, puts on a burst of speed. It’s been a long time since he had to run this fast for this long, tree branches whipping and tearing at him as they wind down the hill through the woods. It’s on a downhill turn that he finally catches up, running so close behind the taller guy that Dean can hear him breathing over the crunch of their thumping feet against dead leaves and packed earth.

Dean bumps him hard in the back of the shoulder, watches as the guy goes tumbling in the dirt. Dean’s right on top of him, hauling the guy up by his shirt to his knees, gun leveled at the guy’s face. Dean takes a step back, gets a good look at the “Antichrist”.

Tall, skinny boy dressed in layers of ragged clothes almost too small for him, haphazard scatter of limbs. Smooth face smeared with dirt and grime, eyes wide with fear and adrenaline. Sunken hollows, shadows under his eyes like dark smears, and he looks like he hasn’t slept or eaten a decent meal in weeks.

The sight of him hits Dean like the shock of cold water, a twist and turn, strangest feeling in his stomach.

_Shit._

He’s just a _kid_. Not even old enough to graduate college yet.

They made a mistake.

Dean can hear the others running behind him, heavy-booted feet loud as they pound against the ground and rustle through leaves, stripped of Hunter stealth in their haste.

The kid breathes in quick pants, snatches of breath torn from the air, eyes terrified. “Don’t kill me,” he begs.

There’s something happening to Dean he can’t define. A feeling like his blood is slowing in his veins. Reality pulls from him in quick, ragged threads. It feels like déjà vu, a memory of a dream. There is only the sound of his breath, the color of hazel eyes staring deep, and a bone-deep certainty that he’s been here before.

Gordon pushes past Dean, gun aimed at the kid on the ground, Kubrick right behind him.

Like a man caught in a dream, Dean raises his hand. “Gordon. Gordon, wait.”

Gordon doesn’t even blink, eyes and gun steady on the boy. “What do you mean ‘wait’, Winchester? What for?” There’s a growl in his tone, a dangerous undercurrent like the warning of a wild animal.

Breathe out, breathe in. “Are you sure this is him? He’s just a kid.”

“You think the Antichrist is gonna advertise by looking evil, Dean?” Gordon asks, and this time his eyes do flicker towards Dean, level and sure. So _sure_.

“I’m not evil,” the kid says.

“Or admit it?” Gordon adds, still holding Dean’s eyes. Dean looks away first, looks at the kid crouched on the ground. 

“I’m not,” the kid says, meeting Dean’s gaze full bore. His eyes are almost black in the darkness, imploring, so sincere. And Dean doesn’t know _why_ , but he believes him. 

Sam’s breathing hard and heavy, eyes rolling in his head like a scared horse. Gordon and Kubrick seem very far away right now, their sounds dulled, voices muted, like someone turned down the volume on them. But the kid’s breathing is loud as a bellows, echoing in his ears with the beat of his heart. Dean feels calm, relaxed by comparison.

_Inside the arena, there stood two doors, side by side, exactly alike in every way._

“Come on, Dean,” Kubrick says. His eyes are fever bright in the moonlight. “You don’t think we just stumbled across him by accident do you? It was God’s will that led us here.” Kubrick gives a mild, surprised laugh and looks at Sam. “We weren’t even looking for you,” he marvels.

“And now we finish it.” Gordon’s finger flexes against the trigger of the gun, eyes blazing down the barrel at Sam.

It’s all happening in slow motion; cascade of images, one second slowly bleeding into another, and Dean thinks maybe he’s having a _moment_. One of those things like you see in movies, when it’s all been leading up to this one pivotal point where everything changes forever.

_Behind one waited a beautiful lady, a reward if he was true. But behind the other, there waited a terrible tiger, ready to eat him._

If he stopped to think about it, it wouldn’t make any kind of sense. Fortunately Dean’s not the type to stop and think, much. Besides, he _understands_ it--this low down itch in his gut that tickles the back of his mind, tells him he knows more than he thinks he does. It feels like something old, something he should recognize and know inside out despite that he’s never felt it before.

Dean’s always trusted his gut, his whole life. Gordon and Kubrick, on the other hand, he’s known for five months.

_What did he pick?_

_The one that felt right._

It’s not even a choice really.

He swings, and time speeds to catch up.

It still seems like a long time before the handle of Dean’s gun connects with Gordon’s jaw. Long enough to see his friend’s dark eyes cut toward him, long enough for just a flash of guilt, and then there’s a meaty thump, a short, sharp crack like shattering ice. Dean hears the bone splinter and winces. Gordon’s gun explodes and the shot flies wide, bullet embedding itself in the tree five feet from the kid’s head.

Dean doesn’t pause. “Sorry,” he murmurs to Gordon, already spinning back the other way.

“Sorry,” he says again, this time to Kubrick, whose face registers a brief moment of surprise before Dean’s boot collides with his cheek. The older man falls to the ground in an unconscious heap, and Dean’s got both their guns before Kubrick’s body has even settled. 

Sam’s on his feet, eyes wide with disbelief.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Dean informs him. 

“Thanks,” the kid says, almost stumbling over the word.

Dean shrugs. “It’s at the top of a pretty long list.”

The look each other up and down for a moment, the kid torn between happy and suspicious, Dean slightly in awe of his own actions, and maybe it hasn’t sunk all the way in yet, what he just did. He’s far too conscious of Gordon and Kubrick lying on the ground, the trail of blood that trickles from the corner of Gordon’s mouth.

 _Fuck._ They need to be gone from here. Far, far away from here when Gordon wakes up. 

“You coming?” Dean asks, feet already moving down the hillside. “Or you wanna wait around ‘til they come to?”

The gratitude in Sam’s expression is blinding. “I just need to get my stuff from the cabin.” His eyes are big and hazel, soft and warm, and Dean can’t imagine a more unlikely candidate for the Antichrist. He’s seen puppies that look like they could do more damage.

_What if you’re wrong, Dean?_

_Shut up, Dad. You’re dead._

“All right, come on.” Dean sighs and motions with his gun. Sam flashes him a thankful smile and takes off through the trees. 

Dean trots, keeps pace just behind, gun cold in his hands, heart hammering in his chest. He still isn’t sure what the hell he just did, or why.

All he knows for sure is-- his life just got a hell of a lot more complicated. 

* 

It’s not ‘til they get to the car that his heart finally slows. Sam slides into the passenger seat, pushes the clutter of cups and fast food containers and old newspapers to the floor. Dean’s got the engine roaring, skidding off down the dirt road before Sam can even get the door all the way shut.

What the hell are you doing, Dean? He doesn’t really have an answer for that. Doesn’t know what possessed him take out two hunters for one scrawny kid who just might actually be the Antichrist. It’s funny—hysterical—in the way that it really _isn’t_ , and he feels laughter bubble up in his chest, pushing against the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He swallows against the sound, tastes the sour tang of adrenaline coating the back of his throat. If he starts laughing now, he’ll never stop, and either he’ll wreck the car or the kid here’ll think he’s nuts, maybe climb out the window and make a leap for it.

A giggle pops like a bubble and he coughs into the back of his hand, covers the sound. Forces himself to breathe, nice and slow, get a grip. When they’re about a mile away, he feels like maybe he can talk again. There are only a couple of questions he needs to ask, anyway.

He studies the boy’s profile as the moonlight slides over them.

“Any idea why those crazies think you’re the Antichrist?”

The kid gives a bitter laugh and slumps in on himself. He holds his bag tight against his body, eyes ticking the trees as they pass. “I’m not. Just trust me. I’m definitely not.”

“Well I sure as hell hope not,” Dean mutters. _Because I pretty much just bet the farm on it._

“Trust me. Nothing could be further from the truth.” He sounds tired, like he’s been wrung out and stretched too thin. Or like maybe he’s had to answer that question a few too many times. 

“Your name’s Sam, right?” He’s met a lot of Sam’s and Samuel’s and Sammy’s in his life. It’s a pretty common name. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.

The kid slides his eyes sideways to look at Dean, nods once.

“I’m Dean. Listen, Sam, you got any family? Anywhere to go?”

“No.” Shift inside his baggy coat, fingers tightening on his pack. 

“You got any money?” he asks, and the kid looks away, shakes his scruffy head.

 _Of course not_ , Dean thinks. 

“Okay,” Dean says, takes a deep breath. No money, no home, no family. He’s silent for so long, that Sam finally turns his head back to look at Dean, something dark and shadowy in his gaze. 

“Are you just gonna leave me on the side of the road somewhere?” 

“No,” Dean says, hissing in a sudden breath, as surprised by his own answer as Sam seems to be.

_What are you **doing** , Dean?_

What else is he _supposed_ to do? Just drop the kid and leave him for other hunters to find? 

Besides, they’re gonna be looking for Dean, now, too. 

_Brilliant._

  
  



	2. The Solid Time of Change

**The Solid Time of Change**

Crossed the line around the changes of the summer,  
Reaching out to call the color of the sky.  
Passed around a moment clothed in mornings faster than we see.  
Getting over all the time I had to worry,  
Leaving all the changes far from far behind.  
We relieve the tension only to find out the master's name.

Down at the end, round by the corner.  
Close to the edge, just by a river.  
Seasons will pass you by.

~Close to the Edge I, The Solid Time of Change, by Yes

 

Sam sits on the very edge of the other bed, like he’s afraid it might eat him if he leans too far back. Elbows on his knees, pack between his feet, and he looks up at Dean through his lashes, shaggy hair falling down to obscure his vision. His face glows, cut from lamp light and shadow. The effect is… well, Dean doesn’t think of guys as pretty, but if he did, this one might make the cut.

“Why’d you save me?” His voice is low, steady. It’s got a deep rumble to it, Dean notices. Like a lion.

Dean shrugs, turns toward the motel room window and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Don’t really know.”

The kid makes a sound that’s not quite a laugh. “Come on. You gotta know why.” He’s a pusher, this one. That was clear in the lines of his face, especially the one between his brows that digs in deep and refuses to budge. The last fucking thing Dean needs is this kid rooting around in his head.

“You hungry?” Dean asks, turning back around. “I could go for some food. Saw a diner down the street. You interested?” 

The kid makes a face like he’s gonna push some more… and then his brow smoothes, smirk tugging at his mouth. “Sure. Why not?”

*

The diner smells like a grease pit, but it’s clean, and that’s a nice change. They settle into opposite sides of the red leather booth, white Formica table spread out between them. The waitress is an older lady, sweet motherly type, and she smiles at them a lot while she takes their order. Dean gets southern fried chicken with biscuits and gravy, and it shows up steaming hot and smelling like heaven. Sam’s got meatloaf and mashed potatoes that only smell a little less like heaven, and Dean’s pleased when the kid digs right in without hesitation.

They make it about halfway through their meals before Sam gets antsy, eyes flickering back and forth between his plate and Dean’s face. Dean pretends not to notice, keeps right on eating and is considering distracting the kid with the dessert menu when he finally decides to speak.

“So,” Sam says, setting his fork aside. “You gonna tell me why you saved my life, Dean Winchester?”

Dean blinks, pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth, sets it carefully back down on the ceramic plate with a tink. “You know my last name?”

“Ruby mentioned you,” Sam says, his eyes scrutinizing Dean’s face. “All three of you.”

Might as well get this out of the way now, Dean figures. “Yeah. We killed her, sorry.”

Sam flinches, and for a second Dean’s not sure what’s going to happen—and then the kid’s expression softens, goes stoic, and he nods. “I figured when she didn’t show up.”

Dean folds his arms, lifts his chin and looks the kid over. “So. We gonna have to fight for her honor, or what?” Dean asks. “’Cause I was really hoping to finish my biscuits without the bloodshed.”

Sam stares at him for a second, like he’s not sure if Dean’s kidding—and Dean’s not really sure either. He’ll fight the kid if he has to, but he doesn’t feel like he wants to.

Sam eases back a notch, fingers relaxing against the table top. “No,” Sam shakes his head, looks pensive. “She helped me… a few times… but she was...”

“A bitch?” Dean supplies, helpfully.

Sam chuckles. “I was gonna say demon.”

“That, too,” Dean agrees.

“So why didn’t you let them kill me?”

“You weren’t a bitch,” Dean says and shoots the kid a quick grin. “Or a demon,” he adds, when all the kid does is stare. “Tough crowd,” he mutters as he forks into his biscuits.

“How do you know?” the kid counters, and Dean can’t help but laugh.

“You don’t look the type.”

“Your friends sure thought so.” And damn, he _is_ a pushy little fucker. Dean’s torn between admiring the kid and wanting to deck him.

“What if they were wrong, you know?” He spreads his hands, tries to play it light. It’s easier here, under the fluorescents of the diner, far away from where they’d had guns pointed at the kids head.

“What if _you_ were?” Sam bristles.

Dean nods, considers the kid. Yeah, definitely torn. “Think you’d be a little more thankful,” Dean says, wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I just don’t get it,” Sam says, sitting back in the booth and shaking his head. “They were your friends.”

“I think the key word there is ‘were’.”

Sam’s jaw tightens, face going hard. “I’d just like to know what you think I owe you.”

“What?” Dean asks, caught off guard. A bus boy goes trundling by, shoots Dean a strange look and Dean waits until he’s out of earshot before he answers. “You don’t owe me anything.” 

Sam stares at him like that’s the biggest pile of bullshit he’s ever heard, and Dean wonders what kind of people the kid’s encountered on the road the last two years. Wonders why he’s even wondering. Normally Dean’d flash a grin and shrug a shoulder, let the question slough off without answering. Normally the people around him would let him. And if they didn’t, well, he could always walk away.

But Sam’s still waiting, expectant, and Dean doesn’t walk away. He’s not sure why.

Dean’s fingers curl around his fork, fingering the tines. “There’s a saying. Goes ‘you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for it’. You ever heard that?”

The kid blinks, looks a little surprised, like this isn’t what he expected to hear at all. “Yeah.”

“I saved someone’s life once,” he says, meeting Sam’s gaze straight on. “And I didn’t… I didn’t keep my end. Didn’t do my job.” It still hurts to admit, after all these years, and he’s pretty sure it’s never gonna stop. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. His eyes are soft now, no trace of the anger from moments ago. Dean looks away, nods his head, curls his tongue against the inside of his cheek and forces the words out.

“Kinda figure, in the grand scheme of things, maybe this makes up for it.” 

“Oh,” Sam says. He looks uncomfortable, arms folded across his chest like he wants to hunch in on himself and disappear. “I thought maybe… you know.”

“What?” Dean frowns.

“Nothing,” the kid says, sitting up suddenly. “It’s stupid.” He picks up his fork and digs at his mashed potatoes, gets it halfway to his mouth and then stops, waving it around. “I thought… maybe you were expecting to…” There’s a flush of red creeping up the kid’s neck to his cheeks, and Dean can’t for the life of him figure out what the hell is going on.

“Expecting _what_ , Sam?”

The sound of the kid’s name gets his attention, and his eyes snap up to Dean’s for a second before they flit away, glancing around the room as if to make sure no one’s listening. “That you were expecting me to…” he sighs. “Be _really_ grateful.”

Dean stares, perplexed.

“Jesus, you are really thick, you know that?’” the kid says with a disgusted sigh. 

Dean leans back and folds his arms over his chest. He has no idea what the hell the kid’s talking about, but he’s pretty sure it’s not gonna be flattering. “Maybe if you just said exactly what you _meant_.”

“I thought maybe you wanted to get in my pants, okay?” the kid blurts out. 

There’s a loud crash from the table behind them as the busboy drops the silverware he’d been gathering. Dean turns to glare at him, and he shrinks back, eyes round. 

“You mind?” Dean asks.

The boy scuttles away and Sam heaves another sigh.

“Look. Obviously that’s not what you were trying to do since you didn’t even know what I was talking about,” he says, holding up his hands. He’s not quite looking at Dean’s face, but that’s okay with Dean. “Sorry.”

“So you thought this was a ‘get in your pants’ thing?” Dean asks, disbelieving.

“It… it wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam mumbles. 

And Dean laughs. Throws back his head and lets loose like he’s wanted to since this whole thing started. It’s all just so fucking ridiculous. He laughs so hard for so long that Sam just stares, and eventually the waitress comes over and asks if he’s all right. He waves her off, wiping away tears, and spots the busboy huddled in the corner looking horrified. He has to choke back another round of laughter over that, coughs a few times into his hand and sips at his water, until finally he gets himself under control. 

“You done?” the kid asks.

“Yeah. I’m about done with you thinking that,” he says, rubbing at his face.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Okay,” Dean says and nods, still grinning as he sits up, puts his elbows on the table. “Dude, you’re not my type.”

“What?” Sam blinks like he’s surprised. “Too tall?”

“Too guy shaped,” Dean says. It’s not strictly true, but it’s mostly true, and besides, this kid’s too… vulnerable for Dean to even think about going there.

“Oh.” The kid kinda looks like he’d like to crawl under the table right now, except that he wouldn’t fit, and Dean feels a little bad for him. 

“Okay,” Dean says, thumps his fist on the table. “So, now that we’ve established _that_ , you wanna change the subject?”

“Please?” the kid asks, so quick and relieved that Dean can’t help but smile.

Dean grins like a shark, fork secure in his fist. “Let’s talk about you.”

“Figured you already knew everything about me,” he says, looking surly all of the sudden, and damn this kid’s got some moods on him. Sam picks up a napkin and starts fiddling with it, twisting and tearing off little bits.

Dean chews, swallows, considers that. “Your name’s Sam Harrison and you used to go to Stanford until a couple years ago.” He pauses, thinks. “Few people out there think maybe you’re the Antichrist,” he adds, shrugs. “That’s what I know.”

Sam looks shocked—and more than a little offended. “You mean you didn’t even research me before you decided to hunt me down and kill me?”

Dean shifts in his seat, wants to argue that, but he can’t really. “I’m more of a point and shoot guy,” he admits.

Sam just looks at him and shakes his head like he can’t believe it.

Dean decides to ignore that. “You’ve obviously been hunting a while,” Dean says. “You killed the siren.”

“Siren?” Sam gets a strange look on his face, like he’s not sure what Dean means, and then smirks. “Siren. Right.”  
Dean sizes him up for a minute, figures he’s probably not gonna get a straight answer if he dives into that one. “How long you been hunting?”

The kid tosses the napkin aside, folds his fingers together nervously. “Almost two years now.”

“That how long people been chasing you?”

Sam goes still, considers for a long moment. Finally, the kid lets out a slow breath, nods once. “Yeah.”

Dean digs his fork into the last bit of biscuit, spears it on the end, and makes it a point to not look up. “And you don’t know why?”

“I know why,” the kid says, and something in his tone makes Dean raise his head. 

He’s got a hard smirk on his face, bitter twist to the curve. He meets Dean’s gaze with something like amusement. “Because they think I’m the Antichrist.”

Dean snorts, just stares at the kid for a second. Then he shovels in the last bite of his food into his mouth and chuckles around it. 

“But I’m not,” the kid adds, steady and sincere, and the look in his eyes makes Dean believe him, just like it did out in the woods earlier tonight.

Dean nods and they finish their meal in silence.

*

They ride back to the motel in relative silence, Sam seeming tenser than he did in the restaurant. Dean turns up the radio, taps his hands against the steering wheel and lets it ride. If that’s what the kid needs, then he’s in luck, because Dean pretty much excels at letting things ride. It’s how he gets through life.

It’s either that or snap.

Getty Lee’s voice rises, echoing off the insides of the car, and Dean can’t help but notice that the kid taps his fingers along to the beat as he stares out the window. Rush fan, all right. That gives him a couple more points in the plus column.

Sam’s still quiet when they get back to the room, and Dean changes into his pajama bottoms in the bathroom. It’s a strangely comforting ritual, familiar with years and not at all awkward.

He presents the bathroom to Sam with a flourish, and the kid gives him an uncertain look before he finally musters up a smile and nods, walks in and closes the door.

Dean’s already under the covers, flat on his stomach, hand under the pillow, fingertips just touching the edge of the Colt when Sam emerges. He listens as the kid pauses in his step, hesitates a moment, and then set his pack down, slides between the sheets with a sigh.

Dean falls asleep to the sound of Sam’s breathing in the darkness, and despite everything that’s happened tonight, he sleeps better than he has in at least a year.

*

In the morning, Dean’s already awake, showered and dressed before the kid finally wakes up. “Rise and shine,” he sings out as he walks toward his bag.

“Hey,” Sam says, slow, small smile creeping out as he sits up, runs a hand through his hair.

“Sleep well?” Dean asks, shoving his toothbrush into the outside pocket of his pack.

“It was a real bed,” the kid says. “That makes it better than most nights.”

“Yeah,” Dean says and chuckles. “Nothing like a little credit card fraud for experiencing the finer things in life.”

“ _That’s_ how you do it?” the kid asks, disgusted, like he can’t believe it.

“Am I offending your sensibilities, Princess?” Dean quips, casting a glance over his shoulder at the kid. “Sorry. It’s this or barns, and I like my fillies on two legs.”

The kid makes a noise and Dean turns around, spreads his arms in helpless gesture. “Call me old-fashioned. What can I say?”

The kid looks at him like he’s not quite sure how to respond to that, and then finally he laughs. “Yeah. You’re a gentlemen.”

“Don’t have to insult me,” Dean jokes, zipping his pack closed.

The kid crawls out from under the covers, still dressed in his jeans, and Dean makes it a point to look away—but not before he catches a glimpse of how well ripped the kid is, skinny as a rail or not.

Sam stretches and yawns, and oh, Dean’s not looking, he’s _so_ not looking, except that he can see the kid out of the corner of his eyes and he really _wants_ to be looking. Not in a gay way or anything, but dude, you just don’t see abs that well-defined every day.

The kid crawls out from under the covers and gets to his feet, shuffles off to the bathroom with his backpack in hand. Dean flops on the bed and clicks on the TV, watches part of an old horror movie, a few minutes of the home shopping network, and finally settles on the Food Network. The noise of the shower runs in the background, finally cutting out right around the time Iron Chef’s starting, and he clicks off the TV with a tinge of regret. 

When the kid emerges a few minutes later, Dean’s busy stuffing the last of his clothes into his bag. He risks a glance over his shoulder and sees him fully clothed now except for socks and shoes. Dean flashes a quick smile.

Sam sighs, sits back down on his bed. “Thanks for dinner, Dean. And for the place to sleep.”

“Don’t forget saving your life,” Dean adds, tipping his head at the kid.

The kid snorts and shakes his head, ruefully. “And for saving my life,” he obliges, nodding once. 

“Don’t mention it,” Dean says with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah,” the kid hedges, looking down. He frowns, taking a breath. “Thing is, I should really get going. Not that I don’t appreciate the place to stay, but your friends are gonna be on my trail as soon as they can, and I should keep moving while I’ve got a head start.”

“What?” Dean wasn’t prepared for this. His brain says it makes total sense; let the kid go, get as far away as possible, forget about him. But that nagging feeling in his gut still won’t let go. “You can’t just leave,” he sputters. “They’re gonna be looking for you.”

“Yeah,” the kid says, like Dean might be a little slow. “That’s what I said.”

“But—”

His frown deepens as he stares at Dean, eyes flickering back and forth between Dean’s—and then finally something seems to click, muscle in the kids jaw tensing and releasing. “They’re gonna be looking for you, too, aren’t they?” he asks, and his voice is gentle, softer than Dean would have thought it could be.

“Yeah,” Dean says, shrugs against the loss. And it still hasn’t hit him all the way yet, the way he broke ties yesterday. He’s still hopeful that maybe it won’t. If he can just keep moving, everything’ll be all right. “All the more reason to stick together,” he says to the kid, like it’s nothing—no big deal. Just two guys discussing the facts, nothing to see here, move along.

Sam’s lips thin and he presses them together. “You don’t think they’ll forgive you?”

Dean laughs, short, harsh bark that echoes of the motel walls. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Satan starts selling sno-cones, I’m in.” He tilts his head, drums his fingers against his thigh in a quick rhythm, and damn, he really needs to do something else with his hands, because just standing here feels awkward. He finally settles for just throwing them up in the air and forges on. His mouth is usually the best distraction in any situation. “Way I figure it, you and me are both on the hit list, now. Might as well make the most of it, right? Go cross-country a while, see some sights, kill some evil bastards, huh?” He fixes the kid with his best lopsided grin. “Whaddaya say?”

Sam laughs, an actual genuine laugh, and looks down, a little embarrassed. “You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack.” The words pop out, years of habit, but they leave a bitter sting in his throat as they fly, memories of Dad dancing at the edge of his mind. He pushes them away, clears his throat.

“You don’t even know me, Dean.”

And, it’s the strangest thing. The words _Yes I do_ climb to his lips before he can think, and he blinks, doesn’t understand them, has to swallow them back before they escape and make him look like even more of an idiot than he feels like right now.

He turns away, shrugs instead. “I know you know how to hunt,” he says, digging into his pack. “And if you’re worried about earning your keep—” he breaks off and grins as his hand happens on what he was looking for. “Don’t be. You’re gonna earn it,” he says, and tosses the kid his Glock. He catches it, reflexes quicker than Dean could have hoped, turning it over in his hands, staring at it, finally looks up at Dean with unreadable eyes.

“This isn’t the life I wanted,” he says, shakes his head a little. 

“It’s the one you got now,” Dean supplies, and the kid just looks at him.

“Yeah,” Sam looks down at the gun. “All right.”

*

Four days in, and Sam is coming to understand that Dean’s idea of partnership seems to consist solely of two stereotypes; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Bonnie and Clyde. Sam doesn’t much feel like playing the part of a girl, so he opts for the Sundance Kid, and Dean rolls with it, likening their story to the details of the movie. Sam’s not entirely sure he’s comfortable with how _either_ of those duos end in their respective stories, but there’s something strangely charming about the way Dean’s enjoying their outlaw status via movie characters, so Sam lets him go. Maybe it’s how Dean copes.

He still doesn’t understand why this guy did what he did—why he saved his life, turned on his own friends. It doesn’t make any sense, no matter what stories Dean told him about duty and honoring the memory of someone who obviously meant a lot to him once. All the love in the world for someone else can’t account for this—for what he’s done for _Sam_ \--and Sam is at once mystified and fascinated. 

Okay, yeah, Dean’s fucking _hot_ , but that is _so_ not the point.

And everything in Dean’s attitude makes it clear to Sam just how much he over thinks everything, how he’s always looking for the _reason_. Dean lives a life without a point beyond today. Kill some monsters, eat some food, sleep in a warm bed, maybe get laid if you’re lucky and play your cards right. What more could a man want?, Dean seems to ask with every word, every move.

It’s strangely comforting to Sam in a way he never would have expected. Dean—despite his big green eyes and his sharp jaw—is exactly the kind of person Sam’s avoided in his previous life. The kind of guy who meant trouble and spelled out the words “no future” in huge, glowing letters. He’s the kind of guy Sam would have _wanted_ , though. The kind he would have wanted to fix. 

But maybe… just maybe… Dean doesn’t need fixing. Maybe he’s exactly who and what he’s supposed to be. He’s not the most forthcoming soul Sam’s ever met, but really, Sam can’t blame him for that. It’s not like Sam’s looking to bare his innermost secrets at the drop of a kind word. But there’s an honesty to Dean, a sincerity Sam can’t help but see. What you see is what you get, and Sam’s always had a distaste for people like that in his life; the base ones, the simple ones, who didn’t need much and never contemplated anything. But on Dean it sits right, sits true. It makes sense to Sam in a way he can’t quite put into words. It _fits_.

Or maybe Sam just wants to fuck him.

And Sam, for all his high and mighty ideals, kind of hopes it’s the latter. Because anything else is a very dangerous feeling to have.

*

They spend two weeks on the road, two glorious weeks, Sam with the window of the Impala rolled down, wind in his hair and free as he’s ever felt, hand moving through the air outside the car. He’s been on the run, without rules and without law for a long time, but there’s something to this—something to _sharing_ this—this vagabond life of town to town without even caring which end is up, no destination and no goals, just the Impala and Dean and the open road, and he wonders how it is he never knew.

They eat every meal together, talk about the easy things, about women and music and folk lore, and maybe Sam doesn’t agree with Dean on every point—in fact, he can pretty much say with equanimity that he _doesn’t_ \--but it doesn’t matter. They talk, and they laugh, and they have a few beers and watch shitty TV in the motel room together and discuss the merits of plotless horror movies and cooking in iron skillets versus non-stick, like either of them fucking _know_. And it’s… nice. Comfortable. Out here, under the wide blue sky, clouds stippled like paint brush strokes, two weeks feels like a lifetime.

Dean sleeps in one bed and Sam sleeps in the other. Dean always takes the one by the door and Sam just smirks, lets him be the gallant one. It’s kind of flattering, really. Sam listens to him breathe in the night, knows the exact moment he falls asleep and Sam always follows soon after. Dean always showers before Sam wakes up, and on the fourteenth day, Dean walks out in just a towel around his waist, says good morning like it was any other time and he was wearing all his clothes, and Sam manages a nod and a murmur before he hurries to the shower, face red and feeling uncomfortable. He washes his hair carefully, slowly, washes his body without lingering too long in any one place, and definitely doesn’t think about Dean’s chest at _all_.

They have breakfast at a sweet little mom and pop’s, and Dean orders a meal that makes Sam’s veins want to clog in sympathy. After, once they’ve flown through a few counties, Dean finally pulls the car over in what looks like the middle of nowhere except for the sign sitting by a gravel driveway.

“You ever even fired a gun before?” Dean asks, arching a brow at Sam. When Sam offers him nothing but an annoyed look, Dean tilts his head and grins. “I know you know your way around an axe,” he says. “But a gun’s a little more subtle.”

Twenty minutes later they’re out on the range, Dean explaining all the simple parts of a gun, running him through the paces on how to load it.

“Okay,” Dean says, watching Sam handle and load the Glock with a studious eye. “This is the first thing you’ve gotta learn.” He motions for Sam to turn around, and Sam does, pulls the gun up in front of him and sights down the barrel. He’s never fired one before, maybe, but he understands the principle of the thing—and he’s seen lots of movies.

“Not bad,” Dean says, casual as he steps up behind Sam, and Sam is suddenly conscious of the small space between them, the way his heart speeds up a little. He touches Sam’s shoulder, brush of his fingers, steps in closer. Straightens Sam’s shoulder there, then touches Sam’s elbow, feather-light, lifts Sam’s arm, and he’s so close now that Sam can feel Dean’s breath against his hair. 

"Let me show you," Dean says, voice gritty and low, "how it’s done." Dean’s fingers touch his wrist and then move up over Sam’s fingers, turning him slightly to the side and bringing up his arm in line with the center of the target.

"See, for a really good grip, you have to flex your fingers," Dean goes on, flexing his fingers over Sam’s. "Have to feel it, let it settle in where it’s most comfortable." He steps a little closer, his body only inches from Sam’s, his head leaning over Sam’s shoulder, cheek tilted close to Sam’s but angled away as he stares down Sam’s gun barrel, checking the aim. "You gotta relax into it,” he coaxes, voice low but matter-of-fact. "Handle it like it was part of you."

"So I have to squeeze it?” Sam asks. And if Dean’s fucking with him—and Sam’s not sure Dean _is_ , but he’s _fucking_ with Sam whether he means to be or not—then Sam’s gonna fuck right back, because no way in hell is this fair. He squeezes the trigger, feels the gun kick, shoving his hand up into Dean’s, his shoulder back into Dean’s body, and he pulls forward, takes a breath and focuses his eyes on the target. There’s a ragged hole torn just to the right of the center of it, and Sam feels something bright and hard and fierce rise up in his chest.

"Well," Dean murmurs, nodding once, his face still entirely too close to Sam’s. "Look at that."

"That's good. Really good." Dean releases Sam’s hand, lets his fingers trail over Sam’s wrist as he pulls away. "That's exactly it. Gotta let the moment wash over you. You got aim, kid."

Any second now, Dean'll step back and they'll go back to casual banter, but for this instant, Dean's close to him, and Sam can't say as he's unhappy about it. That’s why he moves away first. Clears his throat and nods at the target. “Guess that means it’s your turn.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, faint nod like he’s distracted, and Sam notices how he takes a step back, despite the fact that Sam’s already moved away.

Just a mistake, then. Nothing meant by it, and it’s just as well, Sam thinks as he tightens his jaw. 

*

Once Dean’s back behind the wheel, Sam in the passenger seat, things start to feel a little bit like normal between them again. The miles fly away under the Impala, ticking off in white dotted lines, and Sam buries himself in the newspaper, finds a story about a missing hunting party in the next county over. He frowns, rubs a hand across his cheek and reads it again.

Dean reaches over and turns down the radio, glances over at Sam and asks him, “What?” He’s frowning, curious, but not worried. 

Sam shakes his head, reads the article out loud to Dean.

“Might be something, could be nothing,” Dean says, strumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Damn. I wish I still had my laptop.”

“Laptop?” Dean asks, quirking his head at Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam answers, unable to keep the wry note from his voice. “Some of us actually do research before we go running off to kill things.”

Dean takes it in stride, curls one side of his mouth and nods his head. “Okay,” he says, amiably. Cranes his neck to check the lane beside him and floors it across two lanes to catch the next exit off the highway.

“What are you doing?”

Dean just grins as the tires squeal around the ramp.

*

The Best Buy is relatively quiet except for the music broadcast throughout the store—something bright and jangly with lots of emo whining—and Dean visibly blanches when they walk in. Then he catches sight of a cute little blond employee, too much eyeliner inked around her eyes, standing in the CD section, and his grimace smoothes into a smile.

“We gonna be here long?” He asks, still looking at the girl. The girl’s caught sight of Dean now, and is smiling back, a little brighter than strictly necessary for employee protocol. 

“Half an hour, maybe,” Sam says.

“Pick out whatever you want,” Dean says, and claps Sam on the shoulder. He starts walking in the direction of the radios, and half turns. “And take your time.”

Sam’s been in the laptop aisle for all of five minutes before the music changes. Aerosmith starts to play out of the speakers, and Sam can’t help but smirk. Five minutes after that, he’s engrossed in a Dell laptop with a 19-inch widescreen display. It’s got all the bells and whistles and it’s nicer than anything Sam’s ever owned. He’s not even sure it knows what an “hourglass” is.

“So, this the one?” Dean asks from just behind his shoulder and he jumps. Dean chuckles. “Nice reflexes.”

Sam tosses Dean a dirty glance, and then looks back at the screen. “What happened to the blond girl?”

“Marissa?” Dean asks. “Oh, she was great. Really helpful. You know she’s gonna graduate high school this year?”

Sam laughs, can’t help it. “She ask you to prom?”

“Cute,” Dean says, and Sam can’t help but notice how close Dean’s standing, peering over Sam’s shoulder. “So, this it?”

“It’s way more than I’ll ever need,” Sam says, a little wistful. “There’s another one over here that’s—“

“We’ll take it,” Dean says.

“I can’t afford—“

“No,” Dean agrees. He holds up a credit card and grins. “But Achmed Ventura can.”

And okay, it’s not like Dean’s actually buying this for Sam. They’re as good as stealing it. But there’s something about the honest grin on Dean’s face—like he’s pleased as hell—that strikes a chord in Sam. Credit card fraud, non-research-guy or not, there’s something good at Dean’s core. He’s a nice guy, despite all his mannerisms to the contrary, and he’s gone out of his way to make Sam feel welcome, comfortable.

He wonders how Dean would act if Sam told him the truth. Thinks maybe he should.

Dean’s still grinning as they leave the store with the laptop and all the accessories free money can buy, and Sam feels sick. 

*

They stop for dinner at a greasy spoon of a place, and Sam’s moodily silent. Dean knows he went too far today on the shooting range, got a little too close. He hadn’t meant to, really. It just sort of happened, the same way he grins and girls phone numbers fall into his lap. He’d just… gotten carried away. Like shooting first and asking questions later. Like knocking out his almost-blood brothers and saving a complete stranger. He doesn’t know what the fuck gets into him sometimes.

He orders a beer with his food, slams it back and feels it glow, warm and comforting in his belly. 

“You don’t owe me anything. For the laptop,” he adds when Sam just looks at him. “It’s not like I even paid for it.”

Sam nods. “It’s not that.”

Dean hesitates, clears his throat and glances down at the table. “Hey, if this is about the firing range earlier—“

“Not that, either,” the kid shakes his head, looks distracted.

Well, all right then, Dean thinks. He’s pretty much out of ideas and the kid isn’t exactly being forthcoming. Dean thinks about pressing, but the kid looks so jumpy Dean thinks he might just bolt if Dean moves too quick.

“I saw a motel down the road, on our way here. We can get a room there, let you do your research thing,” he says with a motion of his hand to indicate said research-thing.

“Okay,” is all Sam says, takes another bite.

Dean remembers that he’s good at letting things go and finishes his dinner.

*

They’re sprawled out on their individual beds across 70’s plaid—brown orange and faded yellow and Sam thinks maybe it’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen in his entire life—Dean watching TV with the volume turned down while Sam surfs through newspaper articles. The room is stifling hot despite that it’s full on wintertime outside, and even though they search the whole room twice, they can’t find the temperature control. They’re both sweating, Dean’s t-shirt clinging to the musculature of his back, and it’s hard for Sam to stay focused on the screen. Finally, Dean sits up and yanks his t-shirt over his head, clad now in nothing but boxer shorts, and Sam’s sure he’s being punished for something, because this is just so unfair. Sam’s been fighting pulling off his own shirt for the last half hour, thin material nearly soaked through. He heaves a sigh, tugs it over his head.

“Hot as a bitch in here,” Dean says conversationally, glancing at Sam. His eyes don’t linger, just look long enough to take in the fact that Sam’s taken his shirt off, and then he goes back to watching TV like it’s his job. 

Irritated and not really wanting to think about why, Sam returns to surfing with the same focus Dean’s giving the TV. He’s almost forgotten about Dean entirely, completely engrossed in reading when Dean finally rolls over a while later. 

“So? Anything?” He stretches, slow and lazy, looking at Sam upside down. It’s a natural move, more out of necessity than any attempt to be sexy—Sam believes that—but that doesn’t stop it from being sexy as hell. Sam stares for a second before he can tear his eyes from the ripple of Dean’s muscles.

“Uh, yeah. They found the hunting party,” Sam says, looking back down at the laptop. “Late-breaking news.”

“So, no case,” Dean says, looking like he’s about to roll back over and lose himself in the cooking channel again. 

“Not there, no. But there’s something else.”

“What?” And now Dean’s interested, turning around and sitting up on the edge of the bed.

“Not too far from here, place called Olive, in Missouri. Lots of missing persons reports.”

“So. Any ideas?”

“No.”

Dean leans forward on the bed. “Doesn’t sound like much to go on.”

“Yeah. But whatever it is, it’s only going after kids.”

“It’s targeting kids?”

Something changes in Dean’s voice when he says the words. It goes deep, throaty, and when Sam looks up, Dean’s expression is dark and foreboding. Dean blinks and a second later, the expression is gone like it was never there. Except that Sam saw it, he knows he did.

“Well, all right,” Dean says and rises with an enthusiastic clap of his hand against Sam’s shoulders. “Let’s get your feet wet, kid.” Dean heads off towards the bathroom, still talking. “We’ll head out first thing tomorrow.”

Sam makes a few notes of names. “Says here that a lot of the missing kids were all in one teacher’s class,” he calls out to Dean. “A Mrs. Thompson.”

“So you’re thinking we ought to talk to her?” Dean calls back, sink running in the bathroom.

“Probably the best place to start.”

Dean grunts back an affirmative and the water shuts off. A minute later he pads out of the bathroom in his bare feet and sits down on the end of his bed. He gives Sam a lop-sided grin. “Look, it’s hot as hell in here, so I hope you don’t mind me sleeping in my underwear.”

“Oh,” Sam says, the visual catching up with him. “Oh, yeah. I mean sure,” he shrugs, like it’s no big deal.

“As long as we’re in separate beds…” he says and grins, spreading his hands. He sounds genuinely apologetic, and like he’s trying to cover with a joke. When Sam doesn’t smile back, he seems to stumble verbally, eyes moving away from Sam’s. “I just… didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“No. Right. It’s fine,” Sam says as he closes the laptop. He gets to his feet and thumbs the button on his jeans. “Think I’ll do the same,” he says, and before he’s even got his zipper halfway down, Dean nods and rolls over on his side away from Sam. The bitch of it, Sam thinks, as he wriggles out of his jeans, is that he can’t tell if Dean’s not looking because he isn’t attracted, or because he’s too attracted. Dean’s been so careful since the shooting range today. 

He lies down on his side, eyes following the curves of muscle over Dean’s back, and thinks about what might have happened if he’d stepped into those arms instead of away, earlier. Remembers the way Dean’s voice went all gravelly, breath leaving chills across Sam’s neck with every word, the heat of his fingers over Sam’s wrist, until he can’t stand it anymore.

He rolls over on his other side and stares at the wall, tries hard to remember that nothing good can come from any of those thoughts.

Sleep’s a long time coming.

 

*

 

Dean’s up and dressed before Sam even opens his eyes the next morning. 

Another thing that Sam finds unfair about this whole… partnership, is that Dean is totally a morning person and Sam is… decidedly NOT. Normally someone awake and bustling around the bedroom before Sam’s even opened his eyes would be enough to have Sam stuffing his head under a mound of pillows with a groan of annoyance. In point of fact, he’s tried employing this very defense on a couple of occasions. But Dean also has a tendency to belt out sing-song statements like “Good morning, sunshine!” or “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!” and then trundle on about the room whistling a jaunty tune while making as much noise as humanly possible, and Sam has quickly discovered there is no defense in the universe that works against Dean’s morning joy. Not even Sam’s trademark morning grumpiness.

Because the second he throws the pillows off his head and sits up, meaning to glare Dean’s face right out of existence, Dean’s standing there looking right back at him with a bright grin, like he’s happy as hell to see that Sam’s here, and tells him the bathroom’s free, or asks him what he wants for breakfast, and one day, even hands him a cup of coffee.

There’s no defense against a grin like that; it’s charming, infectious. Sam is utterly screwed. Or maybe he’s just smitten.

Quite possibly, he’s both.

After Sam’s ready to go, Dean takes them to a mall department store and spends about ten minutes educating Sam on the details of picking out just the right suit for a sham. Sam listens and tries not to chuckle at Dean’s decidedly questionable wisdom when it comes to clothing. After about twenty minutes, Dean goes with navy and Sam decides on brown, and then they spend fifteen more picking out ties. 

The guy at the fitting rooms eyes Dean dubiously when he walks up.

“We need to try these on,” he says with a grin, indicating Sam.

The man flicks his eyes over Sam and then looks at the tie slung over the suit that Dean’s carrying.

“Used car salesman?” he asks.

Dean snorts, but the look on his face isn’t nearly so certain, and Sam has to turn away to stifle a laugh.

*

It’s a rural, winding back road they’re driving on, limbs of trees meeting and weaving a tunnel over the road, and Sam kind of likes it, despite that all the houses back here are far enough apart to make them serious horror movie fodder. They park along the road at the end of a gravel driveway and follow it up the hill. The house at the top is small and modest, about what Sam would have expected for someone living on a school teacher’s salary.

Dean pushes the doorbell. “Okay, now when we get in there, you follow my lead, let me ask the questions. We don’t want to do anything to make her suspicious.” Dean fiddles with his tie, turns and looks at Sam. “Does this really make me look like a used car salesman?”

Sam wants to laugh, but then the front door cracks open.

“Can I help you?” Mrs. Thompson is a petite woman in her thirties. She looks a little rough around the edges, like maybe she hasn’t been sleeping so well. Her eyes are kind of impersonal, and Sam can tell the faint smile at the corners of her mouth is forced.

“Mrs. Thompson?” Dean sounds official, all business. “I’m detective Wayne, and this is detective Grayson,” he motions to Sam. Dean flashes her one of the IDs he’d made them at the copy shop earlier, and Sam follows suit.

“We’re sorry to bother you, but we need to ask you a few questions about the recent disappearances.”

“Oh,” she says, opening the door a bit. “I already spoke to the police several times.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Dean says. “We’re private detectives. The parents of one of the missing children hired us.”

“Oh.” She looks at them again and frowns. “Which ones?”

Dean looks stumped for a second, mouth working—

“We’re not at liberty to say, ma’am,” Sam interjects, covering smoothly. Dean glances at Sam, mild surprise in his eyes, and Sam holds on to the moment, steers her focus directly to him. “I know this must be difficult for you, losing your students,” he says, holding her eyes. “But if you’d just be kind enough to repeat for us what you told the police, it might help us crack this case.”

“Well, come inside,” she bids, opening the door for them. “Might as well get comfortable if we’re going to be a while.”

She offers them coffee, then tea, and when they refuse both, she finally sinks down in a chair across from them.

Sam flips open his brand new notepad, sets his pen against it—and it’s weird, how easy this feels. How natural. Sitting here on this stranger’s couch like he has a right to be here, Dean not much more than a stranger beside him, and somehow, it just clicks. 

She tells them everything they already know, and Sam nods, attentive, scribbling notes, he and Dean asking questions in all the right places. When she gets to the end without telling them anything new, Sam twists his pen in his hands and looks at her.

“Is there anything else, Mrs. Thompson? Anything. Doesn’t matter how small. Maybe one of your students mentioned something odd? Maybe they even saw someone new around town?”

“There’s nothing,” she says, and then stops. 

“Nothing?” Sam prods.

Mrs. Thompson makes a vague motion with her hand. “Well, except the story Timmy told the police. So crazy the paper wouldn’t even print it.”

“What crazy story?” Dean asks.

“Fairy tale stuff,” she says, with a more dismissive motion of her hand, a tiny, hard laugh. “The police think he made it up, some kind of post-traumatic mechanism for coping with the stress, or something, I’m not sure.”

Beside him, Dean nods. “Could you tell us about it?”

“It’s silly,” she hedges, not quite looking at them. 

“You’d be surprised what can help us, ma’am.”

“Fine,” she sighs, setting her jaw. “He saw Derek the night he disappeared. Just like the papers said, Derek was walking home from his friend’s house. Chris Jamison lives three houses down the road from Timmy, and Timmy was out back, taking out the trash when he saw Derek walking by.”

She hesitates, and Sam takes a breath, nods for her to continue. “Please.”

“He said… he said he was about to call out, wave hello… And then this huge… _thing_ came out of the woods from across the street. He said it had to be eight or nine feet tall, shaped like a man… except it was _gigantic_ , and green, hairy, with orange eyes and a pig’s snout.” She stares at them like she doesn’t expect them to believe her.

“That’s pretty crazy,” Dean says, sounding wowed, and Sam has to resist the urge to elbow him right in front of the woman.

She arches her brows at Dean as if to say he asked for it.

Dean clears his throat. “And no one else saw anything?” he asks.

“There was no one else. This is a rural town, Mr. Wayne. The houses end after Timmy’s. It’s just woods after that.”

“So, what was he—” Dean starts.

“There’s a path some of the kids take to cut through the roads sometimes. Derek lives on the next road over.”

“I see,” Dean says, makes a note. 

“Is that everything?” Sam asks and she nods.

“Well,” Dean rises. He tucks his notepad back into his jacket as Sam gets up beside him. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Thompson.”

They’re on their way out the door when Sam pauses, turns back. “Mrs. Thompson… you said the police thought Timmy made up this story--what do _you_ think?” 

She stares at him for a second, something strange and haunted in her dark brown eyes. “I think you should find whoever or whatever is out there stealing the children, Mr. Grayson,” she answers, bringing her chin up slightly, as if daring Sam to challenge her.

“Yes ma’am,” he nods, as she closes the door behind them.

*

Dean’s distracted as they walk side by side down the driveway. Not so distracted that he doesn’t notice the way Sam’s shoulder brushes against his every now and then, though. 

“You did pretty good in there,” Dean says when they get in the car.

“Pretty good?” Sam shoots Dean an arch look.

 _No. You were perfect. Like you were born for it_ , Dean thinks. “Yeah,” he shrugs as he puts the car into gear and steps on the gas. “Pretty good.”

Sam makes a noise of dissent and Dean smirks.

It feels good, it feels right, and if he’s honest, it feels even better than things did when it was just him and Dad. He knows it’s strange that it doesn’t feel strange, but he’s not looking to figure it out. Right here, right now, he’s just looking to enjoy it.

“You think she believed what that kid said?” Dean asks when they turn on to the main road.

“I think if she did, I know why she looks like she hasn’t been sleeping well.”

Dean starts to nod, but something in Sam’s voice catches his attention. “What do you know?” he asks.

“Nothing yet. But I’ve got an idea.” The kid bites down on his lower lip, and despite the doom and gloom of his expression, it’s awfully damned distracting. “Let’s just hope I’m wrong.” 

*

He’s not. It takes all of about twenty minutes of researching online for Sam to find the answers he’s looking for. To Dean it feels like forever as he sits on the edge of the bed, fidgeting and watching.

“It’s an ogre,” Sam says, pushing his hands through his hair.

“Ogre?” Dean echoes, brows rising high. “Like, three billy goats gruff with the ogre under the bridge?”

“That was a troll,” Sam answers, typing something into his keyboard.

“Yeah. Okay. What’s the difference?”

Sam frowns, licks his lower lip and stares at the laptop screen. “Ogre’s are a lot bigger and stronger, mostly.”

“Great,” Dean mutters.

Sam goes quiet and Dean can tell just from the look on Sam’s face that there’s something else. “What is it?”

“They also both eat children,” Sam adds, meeting Dean’s eyes over the edge of the laptop.

Dean’s lips thin out and he nods, terse. “Most things that steal kids do. You know how to kill it?”

“Beating it to death works.”

“Excellent.” Dean’s already up and on his way to the door. “Let’s go.”

*

“All right,” Dean’s got his game face on, the two of them walking down a secluded, overgrown road. “You stay behind me and you shoot it. A _lot_ , you got me?” he asks, craning his head to look at Sam.

Sam looks at the gun in his hand and tries his best to look like he knows what he’s doing. “That’s the plan? What are you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna shoot it. A _lot_ ,” Dean bobs his head emphatically. 

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then I’ll reload and shoot it some more,” Dean smirks, increasing his gait.

“And if that doesn’t work?”

Dean sighs and rolls his eyes, impatient. “Then it kills us; we die. Any more questions?”

He’s never seen Dean like this, worked up into a frenzy, gun in his hand, madness in his eyes. Granted, Sam’s only known him for a couple weeks, and the first time he met Dean, Dean had a gun pointed at his head. But this is _new_. There’s a bloodlust in him, a cold steel that runs right through the middle of him. He’s _pissed_ , and Sam, Sam’s not too happy about the situation, either. Chances are they’re gonna get hurt, more likely they’re gonna get hurt bad. Two guys and two pistols against an ogre? Sam figures that’s the stuff hunter’s legends are made of. But Dean didn’t want to take the time to stop and get shotgun shells, and Sam can’t help feeling that this is personal somehow. Something about this has gotten right under Dean’s skin, and it’s like he can’t sit still until it’s finished.

“Dean,” he says, speeding up a little to keep pace. “Dean, stop.” Dean keeps walking and Sam finally reaches out, grabs his arm. Dean spins on him, eyes shooting sparks, and Sam lifts his chin, takes a step closer like a dare. “I know you’re upset, dude. I _get_ it. But if we go in there half-assed, that thing’s gonna kill us.”

For a second, Dean looks furious, and then his mouth thins and he looks away, muscle in his jaw working. “Kids, Sam. It’s got kids. It’s _eating_ them.”

“I know,” Sam says, gentle with his tone. “But if we wanna save these kids, you need to stop going off like some kind of… kamikaze pilot.”

“Is _that_ what you think I’m—”

Sam hears it just a heartbeat before Dean freezes. Something’s running through the woods, crashing through the underbrush carelessly at a dead run. It’s big, whatever it is, and Sam feels his heart speed up. Dean turns, and as one, they lift their guns, point them at the side of the road.

Sam waits, counts the seconds against the sounds, and when the crashing comes to the edge of the road, he cocks his gun, all thoughts of Dean and fear forgotten.

The bushes by the side of the road explode, and Sam forces himself to hold the trigger, to make sure his eyes see what his heart expects.

It’s a kid. A scrawny, teenaged kid in dirty jeans and a ripped t-shirt, tears streaming down his face. Sam only gets a quick glimpse of him before he comes barreling out like a shot and runs straight into Dean without pausing.

“Oh, God, mister. Please.” The kid is frantic, clawing as he fists his hands in Dean’s shirt. “Please!”

Dean uncocks his gun, looks down at the kid and tries to take a step back. He looks lost, uncomfortable, like he wants to crawl out of his skin.

“Mister, please!”

“Hey. Okay,” Dean says, pulling at the kid’s hands, trying to pry them from his shirt. “We’ll help you, kid, just calm down.” But the kid refuses to let go, and Dean looks at Sam, pleading silently for intervention. It’s funny, Sam thinks, that someone so obviously interested in the welfare of children should shy away from them, but in the world of Dean Winchester, it makes a certain kind of sense. Sam’s just beginning to move when the kid lets out a sob.

“Please,” the kid cries, imploring as he stares up at Dean. “My brother! It’s got my little brother.”

Dean flinches like he’s been punched, and Sam sees a second—just a split second--of inexplicable sorrow creasing the lines in Dean’s face. And then… everything in Dean just… changes. His posture tightens, muscles smoothing as he straightens to his full height. His face goes dead serious, eyes hard-edged, all traces of madness obliterated, like they’d never been there. Sam watches in amazement as Dean puts his hands on the kid’s shoulders, discomfort forgotten, suddenly and completely in control.

“Where?” Dean asks.

“Back there, in the woods. It was a… a monster. Monsters aren’t suh-suh-supposed to be real,” the kid breaks into another sob and Dean kneels down, looks the kid in the eye.

“I know. What’s your name?”

“Sean.”

“What’s your little brother’s name?”

“A-Alex.”

“Okay, Sean,” Dean says, and Sam’s never heard quite that tone of voice from Dean before. Deep and somber, sympathetic and earnest. “I need you to show me where it happened.”

The kid sobs again, scrubs at his eyes with the back of one grubby hand. He’s shaking, terrified, and Sam’s not even sure Sean can hear Dean. “We were taking the path and he didn’t want to,” the kid says, shuddering. “It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Dean reassures, flinty, and there’s something in his eyes like understanding. “And you’re not gonna do Alex any good blaming yourself. We’re gonna do everything we can to save him, but I need you to help us. _Alex_ needs you to help us.” He shakes the kid, gently, and Sean looks up, meets Dean’s eyes. “You have to show us where.”

The kid nods, and even though he’s got to be at least twelve, he reaches out and grabs Dean’s hand. And Dean lets him.

Dean leads, Sean just behind him, clinging to Dean’s hand, and Sam brings up the rear, a few paces behind the kid, hand sweating around his gun. They push through the undergrowth, until it clears, narrow, brown path of dirt, over ripe plants pushing at its edges. 

“Here,” Sean says. 

The once eager plants at the edge here lie trampled, beaten against the ground. It looks like a car plowed through here, wide swath of plants laid low into the distance to their right.

Dean grips the kid by one shoulder, gun held tight in the other. “Get back to the road, go to the houses and wait for us there.”

“But—” the kid starts.

“We’ll get him,” Dean promises. “And he’s gonna need you when we do. Now, you get back to the road, and you wait.”

“But…” the kid’s lower lip trembles as he stares up at Dean. “What if… what if it gets you, too?”

Dean’s jaw tightens and he throws a look at Sam that Sam can’t quite figure out. “Then you go get the cops,” Dean says. “Tell ‘em what you saw. Bring ‘em here. But you do _not_ , under any circumstances, come back here and try to kill it by yourself. If it can kill us, it can kill you. You hear me?”

The kid’s eyes fill with tears and he nods once.

“Now go,” Dean says, soft now, squeeze of his fingers against the kid’s shoulder.

The kid turns and runs, disappearing with a crash through the foliage. Dean stands for a second, watches Sean go, and then he turns toward the swath cut through the forest, both hands on his gun.

The demolished path through the woods leads them like a compass to the cave cut into the hillside. Weeds crushed and broken, turned back from the edges of the black gaping hole, and Dean only spares Sam one glance before he crouches and steps inside, gun first.

Five feet into darkness, weak sunlight filtered through the greenery at the opening. Sam can hear every breath each of them takes, feel every bead of sweat that slides down his back. 

Ahead of them in the tunnel, something rushes. Heavy panting breaths and clumsy footsteps, huge and solid.

Dean’s already firing, flash pop of the Colt in the darkness, thundering booms in quick succession as he squeezes off three rounds. 

It has to be close to nine feet tall and wide as a car. All pig snout and slavering maw, brilliant orange eyes that gleam with more evil than intelligence. It roars, swings a fist at Dean’s face, and Sam notices with an odd kind of distance that its hand is bigger than Dean’s head. 

_Flash-Boom_. Four shots and then Dean is diving, rolling under the ham sized fist on a collision course with his head. Sam raises the Glock, pulls the trigger. One, two, three, four, five, and then the creature sets its fiery gaze directly on Sam.

Nine bullets, Sam thinks, pulls the trigger again. A hole opens in the creature’s cheek, skin peeling back to reveal more than a dozen yellowed canine teeth, and its maw splits, joining the fissure in a hideous grin. It towers over him, closing in, and he can smell the rot on its breath in the instant before he falls back and unloads the rest of his shots directly into its chest.

It never even slows.

He stands, horrified before the hulking beast, takes a stumbling step back—and that’s all that saves him from the full force of its backhand. His cheek explodes in fire and pain, sending him spinning through the air. It’s a glancing blow, but he still hits the floor hard enough to take his breath away, shivering and shaking, Glock skittering to the shadows.

He rolls over, scuttles backward like a crab, the creature following him every step. Its eyes narrow as it tilts its head at him, leering down like he’s a bug pinned to a card. Everything slows down, panting breath and heartbeats as Sam’s back hits the wall, nowhere left to go. The ogre leans in, chortle of black laughter bubbling up from its chest. Its saliva is warm, dripping down over Sam’s face, running in rivulets, and all he can smell is death. Hopes that it comes quickly.

 _Boom!_ Light flashes in the cave behind the ogre and it roars in rage, spine stiffening, spit splattering Sam’s face in a torrent as it rears back.

It spins away, faster than anything its size has a right, and time catches up again, everything clicking into place.

Sam pushes off with his hands to his feet. He doesn’t know where the gun went, doesn’t care as his eyes lock on a twisted length of wood three feet away from him on the floor. It disappears out of view into the shadows, and Sam bends, wraps his fingers around its sturdy width.

In front of him, the ogre raises its fist. He can only see Dean around the edge of one side of the thing, one leg and one arm, glimpse of a determined, resolute face. _Flash-Boom—Flash-Boom--_

Dust in the air, grit in his eyes, and he’s moving too slow—too slow. The monster’s hand catches Dean across the face and Dean flies backwards, goes down like a ton of bricks.

“Dean!”

The grip of blind panic that seizes Sam is as strong and unrelenting as it is surprising. His chest locks up tight, and for a second he can’t breathe, can’t think—he is running, rushing the ogre, no thought in his mind beyond _slaughterkilldestroy_ , no weapon in his hand except a tree branch. Precious seconds, moments cut in slow motion, and then Dean rolls out of the way of the meaty fist coming down on his head. He staggers to his feet, and the relief that rushes through Sam’s veins is so powerful it’s palpable.

Sam brings the branch down on the back of the thing’s skull anyway. It takes all his considerable reach, but he manages, and the thing turns on him, forgets all about Dean. Which was kinda the point. Unfortunately, Sam hasn’t thought it out much beyond that. He backpedals, but the thing’s reach is longer than he is fast, and it picks him up by the legs with a roar, swings him around and slams him into Dean. There’s a fleshy thump on impact, muscle and bone reverberating. Dean goes flying back, stumbles and falls. The ogre lets go of Sam in mid-spin, and there’s a moment suspended in time when he’s flying, weightless, effortless motion that feels like freedom. He lands on top of Dean _hard_ , stars dancing behind his eyes, and they both grunt with the force of it. Sam gasps, blinks, forces his stuttering eyes open to meet Dean’s.

“You okay?” he wheezes.

“Don’t. Move,” Dean whispers. His eyes are deep green, emerald ice in the darkness, gold flecks like fire, and Sam is caught in the intensity of them, suddenly aware of how his body’s pressing against Dean’s, how close their mouths are together. He can feel Dean’s breath, hot and quick across his lips—and God, Sam can’t think of a _worse_ time to be having these thoughts. 

Behind him, the ogre is moving, scrape of its feet across the stone. Sam can hear it snort, scenting the air, and he wonders if Dean’s hoping they can play dead. The ogre takes another step nearer.

Sam takes a breath, starts to move--

Dean’s fingers dig into his shoulder, hold him in place. “Stay still,” Dean whispers and Sam feels the weight of Dean’s eyes sink into him, the way the grit in Dean’s voice sends sparks down his spine. 

He can almost smell the ogre now, feel its fetid breath, the stench of rotten meat. Feels his heart beat, frantic rhythm outpacing Dean’s through the cages of their ribs. His brows draw together, pleading silently with Dean as he stares, and Dean turns his face, cheek grazing Sam’s lips with warmth. _Trust me_ , he whispers, so soft into Sam’s ear that even Sam can barely hear him, warm breath sending chills racing down his spine. _Trust me_ , and something turns over in his brain, something so old and natural it almost feels like instinct. Suddenly Sam doesn’t give a damn about the ogre. He lets go, relaxes into Dean’s body and doesn’t move, not even when he can feel saliva from the ogre drip down the back of his neck. One last look at Dean, and then he closes his eyes, holds his breath—

 _Now_ , Dean mouths the word against Sam’s ear and Sam obeys, pulls his body in a tight quick roll to the right, comes up on his side—

Dean’s arm moves with blinding speed.

“Surprise, motherfucker,” Dean hisses. The ogre’s snort of surprise is cut short by the explosion of Dean’s gun and its head snaps back, whatever passes for its brains spraying out all over the roof of the cave. It stumbles back—already dead and too quick to know it—and falls on its ass, and now Sam can see the empty, gory socket where its right eye used to be. The second it goes limp against the cave floor, Dean lets his gun hand drop and rolls over to look at Sam. 

“You okay?” he asks, barely even breathing hard.

Sam runs a shaking hand across his cheek and manages a nod, nerve failing him now that the moment has passed, rush of adrenaline fading.

“Hey.” His hand catches Sam’s, draws it away from Sam’s face, and God, his skin is warm, fingers as heavy and strong as they look. “You got a cut on your face,” Dean says, leaning even closer. “Is it--?”

He stops then, their faces only inches apart, bodies too close, and Sam feels like he’s suffocating.

“Help!” In the distance, a kid’s voice calls out, not far off, and Dean’s head snaps to as he hears it.

“Alex?” Dean yells, and then they’re both on their feet, moment forgotten.

 _Little brother_ , Sam thinks, and for a second, it all almost makes sense.

It takes both of them and the considerable strength of the tree branch Sam brained the ogre with to move the rock in front of the tunnel where the kids are being held. There are four of them still inside, and all of them, including Sam and Dean, ignore the stench, the pile of tiny bones in the corner.

They stagger out into daylight, make it to the main road. Fifty feet after that, Sean runs up and hugs Alex in his arms. Sam watches Dean watch them, something in Dean’s eyes beyond pride. Something like memory, longing. Dean looks at Sam with satisfaction, happiness, and Sam can’t help but smile back.

He’s falling in love.

It should be beautiful; ground falling away beneath his feet, two people growing closer with every breath, every word. And all he can think is that he should leave. Get out now before one of them gets hurt. Before one or both of them ends up dead. It’s not like Sam’s ever had any luck with the people he loves.

He should walk away now. Leave Dean here with the kids, disappear into the woods and drop into memory. 

But he _won’t_. He _can’t_.

With every moment, every day and every exchange that passes between them, Sam’s starting to feel like he has a purpose. A _place_. Right here, beside Dean, doing research and backing Dean up. He can’t sort it all out, can’t untangle the way it all comes together in his mind. He just knows he’s been running so long, barely keeping his head above water and out of the way of bullets. And here, finally, maybe, is a guy who could really be his friend. Someone who’s got his back. Someone he can maybe tell the truth. Someone who’ll risk their life for a total stranger, take a chance.

And Sam’s falling in love with him. Stupid, careless. He knows better. But he can’t stop. Doesn’t want to.

He isn’t sure what scares him more; the idea that Dean might run away if Sam tells him the truth… or how much he hopes Dean will _stay_. 

And that means it’s already too late to walk away.

*

They have dinner at a _Denny’s_ , and it’s not fancy, but it’s good enough for a celebration.

“So that was a typical day for you?” Sam asks, after the waitress sets the food down in front of them and scurries off. 

“Another day at the office,” Dean says with a laugh, lifting his drink to his mouth.

Sam quirks a grin, shakes his head. “No, I meant… this is what you do? Risk your life, kill ogres for total strangers?”

“Well,” Dean says, pointing the statement with a movement of his fork. “It was my first ogre.”

“But this is what you do? What you’ve been doing all these years? Hunting things? Saving people?”

Dean nods. “It’s what I’ve always done.”

Sam looks at him, something indefinable in his eyes. “Why?” he asks, like he can’t possibly understand.

Dean bites down hard against his fork, pulls it from his mouth and chews. _Why?_ It’s always the million dollar question. One Dean never considers without good reason. It’s just the way things have always been, since he stood higher than his dad’s knee.

“It’s what my dad taught me.” He’s not even going into details on that. Not even if Sam asks. So he changes the subject; it’s what he’s good at, after all.

“So,” Dean says, amicably above his steak and eggs with a double side of bacon. “You ever gonna tell me _your_ story?”

Sam arches an eyebrow at Dean. “It’s only been a couple weeks.” He rests his hands on the table, fingers twined together, food untouched, seemingly forgotten.

“Yeah, well, patience isn’t one of my…things,” Dean says with a grin. “Besides, never hurts to ask,” he shrugs, not really expecting an answer. He spears some eggs with his fork, loads them on to the end a stab at a time. “You’re all up in asking about my life, so I figure, what the hell, right?”

The kid looks away, something sick in his eyes. Sam looks like Dean’s words hit him like a backhand across the face and Dean wonders what the hell he just did. Dean averts his eyes, stares down at his plate, kid twisting his hands together at the edge of Dean’s peripheral vision. Long seconds tick by on the clock above the counter of the restaurant, and Dean imagines he can hear every single one.

The kid’s quiet for so long that Dean finally looks up. Sam’s staring right at him, eyes so dark and intense Dean forgets all about the fork in his hand. Forgets all about the people around them. 

“There’s a demon after me,” Sam says. His voice is amazingly even, not an ounce of drama. “A big, nasty demon. Not black-eyed, like the ones I’ve seen before. This one has yellow eyes. And he wants me to be his man. Wants me to be something terrible.” Sam’s hands are still knotted together, but Dean can see them shake from here. His eyes lock on Dean’s, fierce and bright. “But I won’t. I’m _not_.”

Dean just stares, imagines he must look like an idiot if his face seems half as surprised as he’s feeling right now. He didn’t expect it all, just like that. Dean manages a nod, feels his eggs stick in his throat and swallows hard. He knows the procedures, knows what to ask, even when he doesn’t want to know. “What do you know about this demon?”

“He’s powerful. The other demons are afraid of him.” The kid’s voice stays steady, but Dean can see him shake. And truth to tell, Dean’s feeling a little shaky, himself. 

“You deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into, Dean.” Such sincerity but he’s still so brittle, like he half expects Dean to get up and walk out, wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

Dean thinks about it for a second, he can’t lie. In all his years he’s never heard of a demon with yellow eyes. Red eyes, sure, demons a little more powerful than your average garden variety, the kind that can cut deals and have a little more pull. But a demon that other demons are afraid of? That’s more than Dean signed on for.

“It’s all right,” the kid says, voice quiet now. “I wouldn’t blame you.” It’s as if he’s in Dean’s head, and the thought makes him shudder. He gives a soft laugh, mirthless and ironic. “Even _I’d_ run away from it, if I could.”

It’s that, more than anything, that makes Dean stay right where he is. “Enough with the pity party,” he says, gruff as he sets down his fork. And all right, okay, if they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do it right. Dean pushes his plate away. “Where have you seen this demon?”

The kid stares at Dean for a second, like he’s surprised. Then he looks down at the table, swallows against nothing and nods like he’s deciding something. “I’ve never seen him. Not for real. But in my dreams… he’s come to me a few times.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I’ve spent months researching lore, on yellow-eyed demons, the big demon names in Hell, but there’s just no way to tell which one he is.”

Dean takes a breath, nods slow. “So what did he say to you, in your dreams?”

“That I’m important. That I have a destiny. That I’ll give in.” Each sentence, short and succinct like a gunshot, slight pause between each. He lifts his eyes, searches Dean’s, and he looks so scared, so lost behind his thin armor. “Do you think a person can escape destiny?” he asks, like Dean’s reply might mean everything.

“I think demons lie,” Dean answers.

The curl of Sam’s smile is almost painful to see, so hopeful and cynical all at once. “I knew you’d say something like that,” the kid says, and Dean has to look away, take a drink from his soda.

“What? I was supposed to say something else?”

Sam laughs, and there’s not much humor in it, but it’s something. The kid folds his arms over his chest and leans back in the booth, shakes his head. “No,” he says, glancing up at the ceiling. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to say.”

Dean nods, folds his arms in front of him across the table and takes that in, wonders what the fuck it’s supposed to mean. “So. You got a script somewhere I should be reading from?” he asks with an arch of his brows. “Cause I’d hate to be missing my cues.”

Sam chuckles. “You haven’t missed one yet,” he says. And then he leans down on the table, arms folded in front of him just like Dean’s as he meets Dean’s eyes. “Why are you helping me, Dean?” he asks, and it’s the million dollar question again, the one Dean’s been trying to solve for a couple weeks.

And Dean doesn’t know. He has no fucking idea. Hell, if he had any sense he’d have left the kid in the dust after he saved him from Gordon and Kubrick—wouldn’t have saved him in the first place. Dean gave up _why_ the second he took his gun handle to Gordon’s jaw. But he has to say something.

“You’re my partner, right?” he asks, shrugs. “That’s what partners do.” It’s not enough, not nearly enough, and if Dean knows that then surely the kid knows it, because the kid’s a lot more clued in to the why’s and how’s of the universe than Dean’s likely ever gonna be. But Sam laughs like it’s passable, nods his head like it’s enough.

“So what do we do now?” the kid asks, looking at Dean like he’s supposed to know, and Dean thinks he might actually have the answer to that one.

“I’ve got a friend we should go see,” he says.

  
  



	3. The Total Mass Retain

**The Total Mass Retain**

My eyes convinced, eclipsed with the younger moon attained with love.  
It changed as almost strained amidst clear manna from above.  
I crucified my hate and held the word within my hand.  
There's you, the time, the logic, or the reasons we don't understand.

Sad courage claimed the victims standing still for all to see,  
As armored movers took approach to overlook the sea.  
There since the cord, the license, or the reasons we understood will be.

Down at the edge, close by a river.  
Close to the edge, round by the corner

~Close to the Edge II, The Total Mass Retain, by Yes

 

The first thing Bobby does after he greets them is hand them both a beer. Dean cuts him a look and Bobby ignores him on purpose, eyes watching Sam. Sam tips the bottle back, takes a drink, then smiles and says thanks, and Dean thinks he can see the hackles on the back of Bobby’s neck go down.

“So… how’s things?” he asks Dean, tossing down another swig. The hackles might smooth, but the tension isn’t.

Dean grins at Sam, probably a little harder than necessary. “You mind if me and Bobby have a word?”

Sam swallows against his beer, nods. “Sure.” And oh, the kid’s just as cool as a cucumber, and if there’s anything that’ll make Bobby love him, it’ll be _that_. Dean feels a surge of pride that’s completely misplaced, and he doesn’t give a damn.

Sam pulls out a chair at the kitchen table as Dean shuts the door to the dining room behind them. The dining room table is pushed to the side, piled as high with books as every wall in the room, shadowy stacks among dim light and dust, and it's comforting to Dean, how this place never changes. Bobby, on the other hand, is not so comforting right now. Bobby's got eyes that stare straight through a man's soul, like he can see all your secrets, and it always makes Dean nervous when Bobby turns those eyes on him. 

“What’s going on?” 

“What do you mean?” Dean asks, hedging.

“Dean, you been here all of ten minutes and I can already see how moon-eyed you are over this ‘kid’. Might as well take out an ad in Times Square,” Bobby snorts.

Dean straightens, arms going stiff at his sides. “I am not _moon-eyed_.”

“Okay,” Bobby says, steady as he looks Dean up and down. “So how’d you end up with him?”

Dean looks down, suddenly feeling like he’s ten years-old. He’s never even mentioned the occasional guy to Bobby—not that there’s been many, and not that all that much ever happened—and not that there's anything going on with Sam, either, but it's obvious what Bobby thinks, and he feels a little weird even discussing this.

“It wasn’t like that,” Dean says, staring at the wall over Bobby’s shoulder. “We were hunting—the three of us—and we found the kid. And I…” He searches for words but even now he doesn’t have any to explain what happened to him that night, the feeling that swept through him and took over. “I knocked Gordon and Kubrick out and left them in the middle of the woods to save him.”

The look on Bobby’s face is nothing short of incredulous, and Dean’s not sure he’s ever seen Bobby look quite like this. “You did _what_?”

This isn’t at all how he’d meant to tell the story, and he flexes his hands, grits his teeth and braces for impact. “I had to. They thought he was the Antichrist. They were gonna kill him.”

“The _what_?” Bobby’s face scrunches, perplexed. “Why the hell would they think that?”

“That’s part of what we’re trying to find out,” Dean says.

“You turned on Gordon over this kid?" Bobby shakes his head, face dark. "What the hell’s got into you?”

He hadn’t expected this, not from Bobby. From his dad, sure—except with dad it probably would have been a lot worse. “Come on, Bobby. You don’t even like Gordon. You’re the one that said—”

“I know what I said, boy. But that’s trouble like you don’t want that’s gonna be coming after you.”

Dean doesn't want to think about that. Doesn't matter, anyway. Wouldn't have changed what he had to do. “So I should have let the kid die?”

“No. No, of course not.” Bobby’s voice softens a bit and he turns, leans back against the edge of the dining room table. “You sure he’s not what they say he is?”

Dean shrugs and walks around one side, beer bottle hanging loosely between his fingers. “I’ve seen Chihuahua’s more demonic than him. Kid can hunt, but he doesn’t seem evil.”

“Hell, that don’t mean nothing,” Bobby says. “Evil don’t always go around advertising what it is. Not when it’s smart, anyway.”

It’s so much like what Gordon said that Dean has to catch his breath.

_What if you're wrong, Dean?_

“What do you know about a demon with yellow eyes?”

Bobby’s expression turns severe, eyes snapping to Dean's, sharp and fierce. “I know that’s even worse trouble than Gordon Walker. What the hell’s going on, Dean?”

Dean sighs. He’d hoped maybe he’d been wrong, that maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. He lifts his hand, beer sloshing inside the bottle. “Kid says there’s a demon coming to him in dreams. A man with yellow eyes. It could just be a dream--”

“Not likely,” Bobby says. “To dream about something like that, you’d have to know about it first.”

 _Come on, Bobby, give me something._ “He’s been hunting for two years. He could’ve heard about it somewhere.”

“Uh huh,” Bobby says, takes another drink. “And what do you think the chances are of that?”

Dean bites down on the inside of his jaw, and there’s no need for him to answer; they both know what the chances are.

“There’s people who think Sam’s the Antichrist, _and_ there’s a yellow-eyed demon after him, and you made an enemy of Gordon. Anything else I should know?”

Dean turns his face to the side. When you put all together like that, it did sound pretty bad. “No, that pretty much covers it.”

“Dean, you’ve got to know this is crazy.”

Dean sighs, raises his hands in a helpless gesture. He knows it's fucking crazy, and if you'd told him a month ago he'd be where he is right now? He'd have told you that you were out of your mind. “I know. I just… ” He doesn’t have the words, never has and probably never will. He’s never been much good with words, but he knows what he _feels_. “I know I have to help him, Bobby.”

Bobby just looks at him for a long time, finally shakes his head.

“What?” Dean asks, vaguely offended.

"If you don't know, I’m not gonna tell you," Bobby says with a not entirely pleasant smirk.

Dean nods and accepts that. "Just tell me you'll help."

"All right," Bobby says. "I'll see what I can find out."

*

Sam sleeps on the couch, dilapidated thing, orange cushions sagging and springs popping, stuffing foaming out from it in spurious waves. Dean goes to bed in the guest room, mattress laid directly on the floor and it's better than any couch, or being in a bed roll. He's comfortable, warm, secure. Bobby's house is more protected than almost anywhere else he's ever been. He should be dozing, slipping into dreams and snuggling into the covers.

But he's not. He tosses and turns beneath the patchwork quilt, mattress soft and yielding underneath him. There's no sound in the distance, not even the summer bugs he's come to know in his time here, no sound of cars. Out here in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of winter, there's nothing, save the hum of electricity and the cycle of the refrigerator. There's too much silence here, the rhythm of his breathing the loudest thing in the room. He's grown soft, too used to someone breathing, the steady of presence of someone else in the other bed beside him.

He scoops up the patchwork quilt and his pillow and carries them out to the living room. Sam’s legs are twisted up in the comforter, his upper body bare, arms stretched out over his head. Sam’s eyes flutter open, heavy with sleep.

“Everything okay?” he asks. Completely relaxed in his sluggish state, he doesn’t move to cover himself, just arches his back to stretch, and Dean feels his mouth go dry.

“Yeah,” he says. “Everything’s great. Go back to sleep.”

Sam nods, eyes drifting closed again, and Dean stands there way longer than he should, still watching.

He’s just tired, he tells himself, just worried about the kid. That’s all.

The loveseat isn’t in much better shape than the sofa, and the material covering it is thin and scratchy. The second he lays down on it, he thinks maybe abandoning the mattress for this was a mistake.

He’s asleep seconds after his head hits the pillow.

*

They spend a few days in the quiet, and it’s unsettling. Nothing to do but the two of them spread over books, Bobby in between, reading just as hard. He makes a few phone calls from the other room, both of them listening, straining to hear, but he’s just a little too far for them to catch the words. 

Four days wear on, sleeping on the couch and the loveseat, nothing more than business spoken between them, and there’s a tension in the air Sam can’t quite define.

On the fifth day, breakfast is sandwiches; tomato and lettuce and bacon on wheat with mayo. Sam sits across from Bobby and Dean as Bobby tells them about a Wolfwere on the loose in the woods ten miles away.

“Wolfwere?” Sam asks. “Like a werewolf?”

“No,” Bobby says, even as Dean starts to nod. “Werewolves have lycanthropy, disease that turns them into wolves when the moon is full. Wolfweres are wolf monsters that can turn into men on days when the moon _isn’t_ full. They’re smarter than a werewolf, but not smart as a man. Just enough to make them dangerous.”

“More vicious?” Dean asks.

Bobby nods, takes a bite from his sandwich. “I’d take care of it myself, but I thought maybe you boys’d like a break from all the quiet around here,” he says with a knowing smile.

Dean catches Sam’s eye, question almost foregone. Sam nods slightly in reply and sees Bobby watching them carefully without really looking.

“We need silver to kill it?” Dean asks, sounding resolved, sounding ready. Like there’s nothing in the world he can’t handle, and Sam’s surprised at how much it makes him want to smile.

“Not according to the legends,” Bobby says, still watching them. His eyes meet Sam’s and he holds them for a moment before he looks at his sandwich. “They die just like most things,” he says.

“All right,” Dean says. “Just bullets, then.” He takes an enormous bite of his sandwich.

“And the silver dagger, just in case,” Sam adds, quietly.

Bobby’s eyes meet his again for a second, and he stares back, not backing down, and finally Bobby nods. 

“Couldn’t hurt, I guess.” 

*

They leave at nightfall, moon rising not-quite-full, parked high in the sky - pale, flat disc almost like an eye - and it makes Sam uneasy as they load up the trunk with equipment. The uneasiness stays, itchy beneath his skin, two of them driving through the night to the spot near the road where the last attack happened.

Sam’s got the Glock in his hand and the silver dagger tucked into a sheath on his belt like an ace in the hole. Dean takes his usual Colt—not the demon killing one, Sam knows from brief experience—and leads the way into the thick of the woods, where their flashlights barely penetrate the darkness.

“Help me.” Wispy voice in pitch-black, female and helpless.

Dean hurries toward the sound, flashlight trained on her face. She’s pale, blue eyes and black hair, gorgeous in every sense of the word. 

“It’s coming,” she says, rising from the ground, throwing herself into Dean’s arms. 

“Whoa,” Dean says, juggling her weight in his arms. “You okay?” he asks, and Sam can hear the breathless note in Dean’s voice as he looks at her. Something dark rises in Sam’s chest, prickles his senses.

“Dean,” Sam says, raising his gun to level it at her head. “Let her go.”

Dean and the girl turn their faces to look at Sam, movement in perfect unison, and the effect is creepy. In the beam of Sam’s flashlight, her forehead is tilted against Dean’s cheek, and her eyes are fire and chaos. Dean stares, questioning for a moment. Sam cocks the gun and aims it distinctly at her face.

“Let her go.”

Dean shoves her away, falls back stumbling as he lifts his gun. The girl falls beyond Sam’s flashlight beam, and he swings it around to light on a series of thick bushes, branches thrashing with her movements, but he can’t _see_ her. Behind the noise of rustling branches, he can hear something strange, more sinister, a sound like bones crunching and skin breaking, and then comes an inhuman howl that turns his blood cold.

It’s on two legs, bent backward and all wrong for a human, fur peppered across all six of its nearly human breasts. Its nose is long and pointed, half-muzzle caught somewhere between wolf and woman, golden rims of its eyes deadly and cold, teeth gleaming slick and sharp as she comes at them.

Dean puts eight bullets in the thing before he goes down under its furry bulk in a rolling tangle of limbs and grunts and growls across the forest floor.

“This bullets not working thing is getting really _old_ ,” he hisses, throttling the thing as he tries to push its maw away from his throat.

“It’s not supposed to be a werewolf,” Sam yells, confused. “Bullets should work!”

“I know!” Dean shouts, with a look at Sam like he might be some kind of idiot. His fingers are curled tight at the thing’s throat, veins standing out in his arms like cords. Sam drops the gun, reaches to his belt for the dagger and pulls it free of the sheath with a metallic “shing”. 

“Fine,” he grates, and dives for the thing.

The dagger sinks into its shoulder blade, not deep enough to hit the heart—Sam knows that as soon as it grates against bone—and the wolfwere howls, spins off Dean hard enough to send Sam reeling back. Somehow, he keeps the dagger in his hand, pulls it free as he lands hard on his ass.

The thing rises to its canine legs over them, fanged maw dripping gleaming saliva, eyes like twin, baleful fires. It lifts its head and snarls at them both, all savage, coiling posture—and then it turns, tears off through the trees, howling mournfully at the sky.

“Fuck,” Dean says, pushing to his feet. There’s a laceration on his forearm, deep and welling red, and he looks at it, fingers of his other hand not quite willing to touch. His eyes flicker up to Sam’s.

 _Bobby better be right about the lycanthropy, or I’m fucked_ Dean’s eyes say without Dean saying a word, and Sam feels a sliver of fear wind its way through his heart. He hopes Bobby’s right, too.

They track drops of crimson across crumpled leaves and broken twigs to a place deep under the earth, through a thicket wound tight and overgrown. 

The thing gets the drop on them, literally, landing on top of Sam with crushing weight as he crosses the threshold behind Dean into a small cavern. It’s got him pinned and he can’t move his arms, can’t reach the dagger, and the thing knows it, too. Fur flying, snapping teeth and rending claws, and there’s the span of a heartbeat that feels like a million years, waiting to die—and then the cavern roars with the sound of the Colt and the thing goes flying off him. He scrambles forward, pulls to his feet and turns at Dean’s side. Shoulder to shoulder, they face the thing down, trapped inside the little cave now, bulk of the things body blocking the doorway. 

They share a look between them, and then Dean rushes it, firing his gun and yelling insults. Sam follows, coming up behind, and the wolf-thing roars, smacks Dean away with a clawed hand. 

It doesn’t have enough time to hit Sam, too.

The wolfwere grabs him in its arms as he slams into it, knife sinking deep into its belly, and he twists his body to the side, yanks the dagger with him, slicing through its stomach as he goes. Clawed hands stop trying to push him away, fall to the dagger instead, and it’s howling so loud Sam thinks his eardrums are going to burst. Closing its hands in a fist around his and squeezing tight, Sam can feel the bones beginning to grind, running out of room. He pushes off with his feet, pulls with all his weight to the side and the thing yelps in surprise as Sam almost falls—and then he’s free, tumbling across the cavern floor.

The wolfwere stands, its arms spread wide, staring down at its stomach, mewling with a whimpering sound that reminds Sam of a puppy he’d had once. Slick coils of intestine fall from the hole, looping to the ground a moment before the creature follows suit, going still with a shudder.

“Awesome,” Dean says, slapping Sam on the back. “You fucking gutted it!”

They’re filthy, covered in blood and bile and tunnel dirt and Dean’s practically bouncing as they walk back to the car. Sam shares a sideways glance with him as they walk, feeling suddenly shy in the wake of feeling more alive than he ever has. His blood sings with something like a warrior’s pride, and he meets Dean’s mood in kind. The rational part of him knows it’s all adrenaline, all primal instinct and animalistic reaction, but he’s human, too, and he can’t help the tint of the glee, of triumph that rushes through his veins like a dizzying drug.

There’s a sound in the distance, squalor of rising screeches like pain. Like hunting things on the move, their prey within range.

“Fuck. It’s got a family,” Dean says, breaking into a run.

“Can’t we kill them, too?” Sam asks as he speeds up, runs alongside Dean.

“Not without a lot more knives,” Dean grunts.

The beasts come through the underbrush, mad cackles and caws, rustling weeds and crackling twigs, a cacophony of sound rising up behind them until they’re running at full speed, sprinting for the car.

They wring the doors open, fall inside and scramble to slam them shut behind their bodies. Their heads collide across the front seat, skin sweating and sliding across the blunt impact. They skid into place, faces meeting for an instant and then flying past, doors slamming shut behind their legs.

There’s a moment of perfect silence—nothing but heavy breaths drawn between them as they lay side by side like a yin yang symbol—and then the howls and cackles begin again, close, so close Sam can feel the hair rise on the back of his neck. 

Sam takes a breath and starts to sit up—and then the car rocks with sudden impact as solid bodies slam into it on both sides. Sam turns his head and sees mouths—so many mouths, so many rows of teeth—snapping outside the glass, painting it thick with saliva, rend and gnash, furious as they twist their heads and batter the car with their paws.

“Fuck,” Dean swears, sitting up, too. He shoves the key into the ignition and turns it hard, Impala flaring to life. The beasts outside respond in kind, snarling louder, so loud Sam can hear them over the purr of the engine.

And amazingly, incredibly, Dean turns to Sam with a grin.

“So, you ever see your life ending up like this?” he asks.

Sam grins back, lips twisting with cynical humor. "I wanted to be a lawyer."

Dean just looks at him for a second. "Well,” he says, shrugs, cavalier as he shoves the car into gear. "I guess that helps with the Latin.”

*

They both fall onto the mattress at Bobby’s without grace, still filthy and exhausted. Dean’s out before Sam, and he’s aware of the sound of Dean’s breathing, the heat of Dean’s body next to his like a brand. He follows into sleep seconds later, his fingers curled around Dean’s forearm, fingertips resting lightly against Dean’s wrist.

His sleep is deep and dreamless, and when he wakes in the morning, Dean’s already gone. Sam groans, muscles aching, and he rolls over, shoves his face into the pillow where Dean had been. It smells like sweat, dirt, and just the faintest trace of blood. It smells more like home than anything he can remember and he sinks his face deep into the down, sleeps dreamlessly again.

*

When Sam finally pulls himself from the bed and pads to the kitchen with plans of coffee, Bobby’s there, array of guns laid out on the table. It’s an arsenal like Sam’s never seen, and he takes a moment to admire it before he asks where the coffee is.

Bobby directs him, and he gets it going, the smell tweaking his senses, rousing him from exhaustion. He’s not sure where Dean is, feels a little uncomfortable standing here alone watching coffee drip in the kitchen of a man’s house he hardly knows at all. 

Bobby’s busy cleaning a gun with an incredibly long stock, and he doesn’t appear to know Sam’s sneaking glances at him until he looks up, unsurprised, as if he’d known all along that Sam was watching. “Dean’s out working on a car,” he says.

Sam joked about being a mind reader; sometimes he thinks Bobby _is_ one. He clears his throat, turns and reaches for the coffee pot. “That’s good,” he says.

Bobby sets the gun down, and the second he does, Sam knows he’s in trouble, wishes like anything he hadn’t come in here.

Bobby leans across the table, elbows planted wide, and looks at Sam with open appraisal. “What do you want from him, kid?” He seems honestly puzzled, but there’s more to it than just a question.

Sam already knows where the coffee cups are, so he opens the cabinet, helps himself to one and hides behind the door from Bobby’s discerning gaze.

“I don’t want anything,” Sam says. He sets the mug on the countertop, feeling every heartbeat as he reaches for the sugar. It’s a lie and they both know it. Sam doesn’t know how _Bobby_ knows, but he knows Bobby does. Man’s sharp as shark’s teeth and not a bit less dangerous for all his calm. Deadlier, even, because of it.

“You want something, all right,” Bobby says, wry, unconvinced. He hears the older man shift in his seat and pours the sugar, white grains falling into the mug. “I just can’t figure what it is,” Bobby goes on, almost drawls, considering, and Sam knows just from the tone of his voice that Bobby’s got his arms crossed. “Sometimes,” he says, as Sam sets down the sugar, “I think you just want _him_.” Sam wraps his fingers around the handle of the coffee pot, knuckles firing pain as he grips it too hard. “But I can’t help…” Bobby says, voice growing graver, and Sam’s hand shakes as it pours, stream of liquid brown wavering and spattering onto the countertop. “…thinking, sometimes,” Bobby says, “you know exactly what you’re doing.”

Sam shuts the cabinet door, feels naked without it between them. “And what’s that?” he asks, summoning up false bravado with a shaky laugh.

“Look at me, boy,” Bobby says, and his voice is like a magnet pulling Sam’s eyes to him.

“He’s a good boy,” Bobby says, voice pitched low and serious, almost threatening. “Man, even, now. I’ve known Dean all his life, and he ain’t never been anything but what he is.” Bobby leans down over his arms a little, tilts his head. “Some people,” he says, “will give you the shirt off their backs if they care.”

“I know,” Sam starts to say, starts to quantify.

Bobby cuts him off with a taciturn glance. “But Dean,” he says, slowly, eyes filled with meaning, “will give you the heart right out of his chest if he cares.” Bobby’s gaze narrows. “Still beating and pumping blood, boy.” There’s a sharpness in him that sends chills down Sam’s spine. “You get me?”

“I get you,” Sam mutters, looks down at the coffee.

“Do you?” Bobby asks, like he doesn’t believe Sam, and Sam feels his anger rising, hot and bright, swelling in his chest.

He grabs the mug off the counter with a quick swipe of his hand, brings it to his mouth and sips. Sam’s been putting together the pieces for a while now, since the night Dean told him he’d saved someone’s life and then let them down, since they’d killed the ogre. 

“Was it his little brother, Bobby? Or maybe his mother? Or his father? I don’t know _who_ it was,” Sam says, turning to face the older man full on. “But I know it was someone important. Someone he loved. That’s why he’s the way he is. That’s why he’s helping me.”

Bobby smirks, unperturbed. “You know a little. Good for you,” he nods. His face settles out, relaxes into something like concern. “But what does it _mean_ to you. That’s what’s important.”

Sam laughs, the sound echoing hollowly in the small confines of the kitchen, and Bobby’s face tightens again, watching him closely. 

“Everything,” Sam says, meeting those eyes head on. “It means everything.”

Bobby nods like that’s all he expected. “And it’s all you got.”

Sam looks at his coffee cup, bites back the bitter taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with what he’s drinking. “Maybe,” he says, tongue curling against the inside of his cheek. “But it’s not like anything I’ve ever had.”

“First love,” Bobby says. “Ain’t like nothing else, is it?”

Sam turns away, stares out the kitchen window, heart thumping in his chest, stares at the skeletal trees beyond the window pane. 

“He doesn’t know,” Sam says, softly, like it’s a secret. He can see Bobby shake his head out of the corner of his eye. 

“Well,” Bobby says. “If you two ain’t just a pair.”

“I know you don’t trust me,” Sam says. “And you’re right not to.” He turns slowly, bringing his coffee cup in front of him like armor. “But I can promise; I’ll never hurt him. Not if I can help it.”

Bobby nods slow. “It’s that last part, what scares me.”

*

They’re working in the junkyard under the wan winter sun. One of the old junkers Bobby thinks maybe he can salvage, and Dean’s up to his elbows under its hood. He’s got a smear of grease across one cheek, jacket sleeves pushed up to the elbows and streaks down his forearms, hands twisting a wrench, and there’s nothing but him and Sam, the silence and the strange green light of a coming storm.

Dean grunts and half stands, holds out one dirty palm. “Hand me that five-sixteenths.”

Sam turns to the array of tools, at a loss. “That’s uh… that’s a wrench, right?”

“You know on second thought just hand me a hammer,” Dean says, sighs as he stands up and rests his hands on the lip of the hood.

“No hope?” Sam asks.

Dean lifts his eyes with heavy, sarcastic weight. “It’s American,” he says, like that’s all Sam needs to know.

“Aren’t Impala’s American?”

Dean’s eyes flash ice at Sam for a split second from under the hood. “It’s a classic, Sam. Nineteen-sixty-seven. You don’t take a hammer to a classic. Back then, they made cars to last. This,” he motions to the car under him, “was made in nineteen-eighty-two.” He throws up his hands like that’s meant to explain it all.

Dean shuts the hood and half sits on it, cracks open a beer from the six pack on the ground and hands it to Sam. He opens another for himself and tips it up, takes a long drink. He tilts his beer out towards Sam, rolls the bottle cap between the fingers of his other hand. “So why a lawyer?”

Sam blinks, looks away from the mesmerizing movements of Dean’s fingers. He puts his hands in his pockets, shrugs and leans against the battered front quarter panel of the car. “I always wanted to help people, I guess. And I thought the justice system would be the best way to do that.”

"You actually believe in upholding the law?" Dean asks, gives him an quizzical look out of the corner of his eye.

“I do,” Sam says with a firm nod.

“You _are_ a dangerous man,” Dean chuckles.

Sam smiles, nods. “Yeah.” His smile fades a little as he remembers where he is, why he’s here. “Yeah, well, that was before I knew about what went bump in the night. You know how many laws I’ve broken in the last two years?”

“How many?” Dean asks, rolling his head towards Sam. 

Sam stumbles for a second, because he hadn’t meant it literally. It’s not like he’s been keeping track, but he knows it’s a _lot_. He thinks for a second, flashes over all the moments where he’d broken a window, or stolen a car, or a book, or knocked someone out, then says, “Like twenty.”

“Aw, don’t worry,” Dean’s amicable, pushes his hand against Sam’s shoulder. “You’ll catch up to the rest of us soon enough,” he chuckles.

Sam turns his head and grins back. “Yeah, well half of them were with you.”

Dean looks strangely pleased by that, and the smile he gives Sam is a genuine one. There’s something so open about him, boyish and almost… Sam hesitates to use the words _sweet_ or _cute_ as a general rule, but Dean really is both when he looks like that. That and drop dead fucking gorgeous. Of course, that last part’s pretty much a full-time thing.

Dean tilts his head back and drains the beer, sets the bottle on the ground with a sigh of satisfaction. “All right,” he says, and steps back rubbing his hands together. He opens the hood of the car again and picks up a wrench. “If you’re gonna be hanging out with me, you’re gonna need to learn how to work on cars,” he says.

Sam eyes him over the end of his bottle, taking another drink. Wipes at his mouth and gives Dean an appraising look. “This is a vital hunting skill?”

“Sure,” Dean nods. “Always make sure the car’s in perfect working order, or that you can fix whatever’s wrong really quick, ‘cause you never know when it’s gonna be your only way out of a bad situation.”

“And you’re gonna let me touch the Impala?” Sam asks, arching a disbelieving brow at him.

“Well…” Dean seems to consider for a second then dips his head to the side. “No. But if I ever get hurt, you might need to know how to do it.”

Sam shakes his head, smiles wryly and drains his beer. “Okay,” he says, setting the bottle down and brushing his hair out from under his jacket collar. He pushes up his sleeves and spreads his hands. “Where do we start?”

Pretty soon they’re both crammed half under the hood, Dean explaining all the pieces and parts and wires, his fingers sweeping across the engine with little points and touches, and Sam’s way too conscious of Dean’s shoulder, shoved right up against his, warm through the layers of their clothes and coats. Dean smells like grease and sweat, like pure _guy_ , and it’s all Sam can do to concentrate. To not turn his head and look right into those eyes, so close to his, to watch that mouth move, while it talks. To not lean in and—

“Hey,” Dean says, snapping his fingers. “You with me or what?”

“Spark plugs,” Sam repeats, spitting out the last phrase he caught.

Dean leans in a little bit, tilts his head as he turns his face toward Sam’s, and Sam can see his eyes now, see his mouth, feel the warmth of heat radiating off his skin. There’s a smear of grease still on Dean’s cheek, and Sam wants to lick out and taste it, the salt of sweat and grime of engine grease, pure flavor of Dean underneath. 

He’s overwhelmed by it. Overwhelmed by this sudden need, the underlying, aching want. It floods him in a rush, fills him, consumes him.

“Dean,” he says, voice low and rough, and Dean stops speaking, breaking off words Sam hadn’t even been tracking. There are amber flecks caught in those green eyes, something bare and primal in them for a split second as they focus on Sam’s. Slow as they move down to look at Sam’s mouth, and the smell of sweat and grease fills him as Dean leans closer. He can feel Dean breathing now, gentle rush of heat over his nose, his mouth, close, so close.

“Boys?”

Bobby’s voice in the distance, and they both nearly clock themselves against the hood of the car as they straighten, turning in unison, hands scrambling for places to be that aren’t on each other.

Bobby’s walking through a line of cars, dust kicking up from under his heels, and there’s a faint smirk creeping around his mouth as they turn to face him.

“Lunch is ready,” he says.

*

They watch Dean carefully through a set of bars built into Bobby’s basement as the sun sets, tiny clock ticking off the minutes as Sam watches Bobby watch Dean, holding his gun and looking tense. Sunset comes and passes into night without a hitch, and they let Dean out two hours afterward, Bobby clapping him on the back with obvious relief.

The moon rises, now full and still flat, scraping low across the horizon. Sam gets into the car with Dean and they ride the ten mile stretch in what feels like seconds, music thumping from the speakers. He loads his gun with silver bullets and prays to whoever might be listening that Dean doesn’t turn on him tonight. Dean’s already given him the speech half a dozen times, and there’s only one outcome. If Dean turns, Sam has to kill him, and Sam isn’t sure if he can do that.

They park near where they had the night before. With silver bullets it doesn’t take long, almost doesn’t feel fair. The humanoid bodies fall, snarling and dying, lying in pools of their own blood. Bobby was right about the lycanthropy, Sam thinks as the night wears on and Dean doesn’t turn, but he’d been wrong about the silver, each bullet cutting down a monster with every pull of the trigger.

When they’re done, they’re covered in a slick, gory mess, quiet as they make their way back to the car.

Dean turns up the radio on the classic rock station, sound pushing them through the night back toward Bobby’s house.

*

Morning comes with faint hazy light, Sam laid out on the couch next to him. They haven’t slept in the same bed since the night they hunted the mother Wolfwere. And that’s probably for the best. Dean wakes first, shakes Sam and sends him off to the kitchen for coffee. Bobby’s waiting for him in the dining room and Dean rubs a hand across his face, isn’t ready for this.

"There's a lot of demons it could be," Bobby says, looking up from the book he’s reading with a shake of his head. 

"Doesn’t matter who if we know ‘why’," Dean says, yawning as he folds his arms over his chest.

“Ain’t got much on that, either,” Bobby shrugs. “There’s rumors about some psychic kids out there who’ve mentioned a yellow-eyed demon after them, but Sam doesn’t seem to have any powers, and he’s the only one who’s gotten smacked this hard with the Antichrist label.”

The room is filled with daylight, morning sun streaming through the blinds, dust motes dancing on the air. Sam walks through the doorway, three steaming mugs in his hands as he cuts through the hazy shafts of light.

He hands one to Dean and one to Bobby then wraps his hands around his own mug. Dean smiles his thanks and Sam smiles back. “What’d I miss?”

Bobby sips from his own mug of coffee, then pauses and draws it away from his mouth, eyes squinting at Sam. “How’d you know how I like my coffee?”

Sam taps his head with one finger and smiles. “Dean didn’t tell you I was a mind reader?”

Bobby’s eyes go wide and Dean rolls his eyes. “He’s kidding, Bobby. I told him.”

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks, frown creasing his forehead.

“Bobby says there are some kids out there with psychic powers who’ve been talking about this yellow-eyed demon.”

Sam looks down, nods his head once and walks slowly across the room, eyes distant as they gaze out through the window. “Really.” His voice is flat, it’s not a question. “And what are they saying?”

“That he’s trying to build an army,” Bobby answers, eyes still on Sam. “That he’s looking for a champion to lead it.”

“And you think that means me,” Sam says, voice soft.

“No way to say for sure,” Bobby shrugs. “Some of those psychic kids think they’re gonna be the ones to do it. They’ve got all kinds of different powers. Some say they’ve got demon in ‘em.”

“Demon?” Dean asks, confused. “Is that even possible? Either you’re human or you’re possessed, right?”

Bobby turns those flat eyes on him. “Ain’t a full-blooded human I know can move things with his mind.”

“So you’re thinking these kids are like… Rosemary’s Baby?” Dean’s astounded, even a little entertained by the idea.

“Maybe,” Bobby says, cutting Dean an odd look. “Might be even worse.”

“Worse?” And that gives Dean a second’s pause. He’s seen that movie like fifteen times and he’s pretty sure there’s not much that’s “worse”.

“But we don’t know for sure,” Sam says, and there’s something heavy in his voice, something gravelly that doesn’t belong here in this sunlit room.

“No,” Bobby says. “We know these kids got powers, and that’s all we know about them. But I did find out something else. There’s a hunter who ran into a yellow-eyed demon about four months ago.”

“Who?”

Bobby turns his eyes on Dean, looks at him meaningfully. “Gordon Walker.”

“You think the demon told Gordon about this? Fed him my name?” Sam asks.

“That’s how long Gordon’s been hunting you,” Bobby says, like it’s almost an affirmation.

“But why tell anyone?” Dean asks, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why tell a psychopath who your front runner is so they can hunt him down and kill him?”

“There’s not much about any of this that makes sense.” Bobby sighs and looks at Sam with regretful eyes. “I don’t know if you’re the Antichrist, kid, but you’re sure in a world of trouble.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Sam mutters.

*

They stay at Bobby’s house through the night, hit the road with quick goodbyes around the time the sun’s climbing free of the horizon. Bobby’s going to call them if he finds out anything else, and Dean figures the old man’s had about as much of them as he can stand at this point, anyway.

Two weeks pass in slow motion, and Dean isn't sure he's ever been quite this happy, quite this satisfied and content. They order in, watch TV, talk about monsters and hunting. They sit too close to each other, in each other’s personal space without thinking much about it, and everywhere they go, people mistake them for a couple. Sometimes Sam gives him a quick smile when it happens, amused and half-apologetic, and one time, Dean goes with it, slings an arm around Sam’s shoulders and grins his million-dollar smile at the lady behind the counter.

Sam’s always there beside him. Always talking, or eating, or sleeping or staring out the window. It feels weird in that way that really isn’t, having him there; steady, constant presence that makes Dean feel more relaxed than he can ever remember being.

*

The next place they stop with a pretty woman within flirt range, Dean picks her up. Sam looks a little strange when Dean grins and tells him not to wait up, and Dean actually forgets about the girl and her incredible legs for a couple of seconds, trying to decipher the expression on Sam’s face. The girl giggles and leads him out, and he makes a good show of things, but he’s distracted the whole time, wondering what the look was. Imagining Sam all alone at the motel, probably bored out of his mind. He waits a decent amount of time after they’re done, and then he kisses the girl and says goodnight.

“Hey,” the smile on Sam’s face is brilliant, so warm and genuine, and the second Dean sees it, the second he walks through the motel doorway, he feels something in his chest loosen a little bit, feels his own mouth smiling back. “You’re back early,” Sam says, sitting up on the bed. 

“Yeah.” Deans nods as he plops down on the bed next to Sam and picks up the remote. Sam turns his head and looks at Dean askance, amusement twinkling in his eyes. Dean shrugs. “I got bored.”

*

When he starts catching himself staring at Sam’s hands, or mouth, he doesn’t think much of it at first. He’s always with Sam, and it’s not like there’s much else to look at when it’s just the two of them and no TV to watch. When there is TV to watch, they lay side by side lengthways on the bed; flat on their stomachs chins propped up in their hands, shoulders and hips just touching each other. One night they fall asleep that way while watching late night talk shows, and Dean wakes to find them both pressed close together, one of his arms slung across Sam’s shoulders. Sam’s got the fingers of one hand resting on the arm Dean’s got draped over him, and Dean starts to extricate himself slowly, a little embarrassed. Sam makes an odd noise in his sleep and starts to turn over, hand reaching blindly for Dean’s in his slumbering state. Dean yanks his hand away from Sam’s clumsy grab and rolls over, pushing up off the bed. 

He pads to the bathroom, needing to piss, and when he’s done he finds himself still half-hard, belly tight with a different kind of pressure. He shuts the door and sits down, wraps his hand around his dick and slicks it shiny with pre-come, skin hot and tight, aching hard now as he squeezes it with quick, practiced strokes. When his fantasy of Angelina Jolie riding him gets interrupted by the sudden image of Sam opening the bathroom door and going to his knees in front of Dean--hazel eyes staring up at Dean, mouth soft as he takes Dean’s cock between his lips—Dean comes with a surge, spilling across his fist so hard he almost bites through his lower lip.

That’s when he starts to realize he can’t deny it anymore.

*

Two days after that, they’re in the wilds of North Carolina tracking a particularly nasty spirit with a penchant for scalping its victims alive. Side by side under the moonlight, both of them with shotguns full of rock salt in their hands. They’re nothing but deadly precision in perfect time together, and it doesn’t go off without a hitch, but Dean knows nothing ever does, and this is about as smooth as he’s ever seen it. In the end, they’re down a couple of bruises and cuts and the spirit’s toast. Dean watches the bones blacken and burn, grains of salt glistening in the orange light, and looks at Sam with a sidelong grin.

Sam looks back, his face flickering in the firelight, smile playing around his mouth, something more than simple pride in his eyes. He claps Sam on the shoulder, grins at him, then turns away. “I’m gonna go check the area, make sure none of the locals saw the fire and got a hankerin’ to check out the hunka hunka burning love, here,” he says.

Sam laughs, nods, rests the shotgun in his arms. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

A minute or two later, Dean’s halfway down the steep hill into the forest, one hand on the trees for balance, Colt in the other, flashlight in his teeth.

“Don’t get lost,” Sam calls, and Dean chuckles, turns back around to say something smart assed.

Something big and fast slams into Sam hard, and he’s gone, tumbling over the edge of the hole into the flames.

“Sam!” 

The flashlight falls, sending light skittering through the trees. Two seconds, and Dean gets the gun up, cocks it, finger on the trigger—

Something barrels into him from the left, and there’s a sharp flare of pain in his side like a thousand stinging bees, guts exploding in sudden fire—and then he’s falling backwards, toppling head over feet down the hill. There’s sharp crack as his shoulder hits a rock, tree roots tearing at him, and all he can do is duck his head, clench his hand over the pain in his side until he hits the bottom with a thump, teeth colliding painfully with the inside of his jaw, slicing the tissue open.

“God dammit!” he swears, tries to roll over. His fingers are sticky and his head is swirling, dizzy from the fall and something worse. “Sam!” he yells, voice hoarse, crackling over the syllable.

*

There’s a moment where Sam doesn’t understand what’s happening, just open air around him, fire crackling underneath him, reaching up to swallow him—and he throws out his arms in desperation, feels his hands hit the solid earth at the side of the grave. He digs in with his fingernails, dirt sinking deep into the creases, nails bending backward. And he’s been hurt a lot worse than this, but it’s the nastiest kind of pain and he can’t hold back a shout. Milliseconds later, his body hits the side of the grave, feet dangling down into the fire, and he can feel his tennis shoes go instantly hot, wonders how long it’ll take before they start to melt.

With a determined grunt, he digs in harder, feels his flimsy nails snap under the force and sinks his fingertips into the soil. Yanks himself up, arms straining and shaking and slams an elbow over the edge. He grunts again with primitive joy, slams his other elbow up over the ledge. And then he senses… something. Lifts his head.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re dead this time.”

*

“Sam!” Dean yells again, and it’s a joke, a parody of a yell, weak and broken. He tries to sit up and pain sends him flat on his back again, gasping for air. 

“Don’t worry about Sam, Dean.” The voice is deep, dark and smooth like silk, an edge of madness to it. Dean would recognize it anywhere. Gordon steps from between the trees into the small clearing of moonlight, smiling like a Cheshire Cat. “Kubrick’s dealt with him by now.”

“You sent Kubrick after him alone?” Dean coughs. He turns his head and spits out blood, knows it’s bad. He sucks in a breath and hangs on. “That’s a sucker bet, Gordon. You’re getting sloppy.” 

“Is that so?” Gordon asks, and it’s not really a question, self-assured self-righteousness, and he steps closer to Dean, levels a gun on him.

““No.” Dean grimaces his best ‘fuck you’ grin, bloody teeth and all. “You were always sloppy.”

“You’re the dangerous one, Dean. Sam doesn’t have the power or the skill—yet—to be a threat.” Gordon’s eyes glint in the moonlight. “But he _will_ ,” Gordon nods, somber. “It’s my job to make sure that never happens.”

“You mean it’s Kubrick’s job,” Dean contradicts, nods appreciatively. “Never risk your own skin when you can send in ‘Buckets-of-Even-Crazier’.”

Gordon’s jaw twists, and he chuckles grimly. “You know… I don’t want to kill you, Dean. Not even after what you did to me. I like you, Winchester.” He points a finger at Dean. “You’re funny, and you’re a good hunter.” Gordon shakes his head like he’s truly sorry, and Dean thinks maybe that’s the scariest thing of all. “But you’re protecting him… and that means you have to die.”

The fire in his side is starting to go numb. The world seems slippery, hard to hold onto. Gordon’s face ripples and sways and he feels his eyes start to close, feels himself start to slide. He knows he’s going into shock, knows that’s supposed to be bad—but it doesn’t _feel_ bad. It feels cozy, and comfy, like a fleece blanket wrapped all around him. It feels like peace, and he drifts in it, lets it start to settle in his bones.

_Sam. He’s gonna kill Sam next._

He forces his eyes open, digs his hands into the ground. He tries to stand up, and his legs know what they’re supposed to do, but they feel all rubbery and wrong. The world swims, hazy and half-melting, and his heart is aching, straining with the shout trying to break free. But all that leaves him is a breathless whisper, an apology and a warning all at once. “Sam.”

“What happened to you, Winchester?” Gordon cocks his head at Dean. “You used to be such a ruthless hunter.” Gordon shakes his head, stares at Dean with something like pity. “Did he put a spell on you? ‘Whammy’ you with some kind of demon power?”

The stillness of Gordon’s pause is broken by the loud click of a gun cocking. “Maybe it was just my lack of batshit crazy,” Sam says.

The look on Gordon’s face would be priceless if Dean wasn’t on the verge of passing out from blood loss.

“Put the gun down,” Sam says.

Gordon’s jaw tenses and he goes utterly still. “You gonna kill me, Sam?”

Dean can hear the threat in Gordon’s voice, the second before he sees Gordon start to move—

“Sam!”

It happens in rush, and Dean can’t tell what’s going on until something heavy falls down beside him, hits him with a glancing thump, and he feels his side ignite in a riot of jangling pain. Ignore it, someone’s down, is it Sam? He turns his neck, tries to see—and Gordon’s lying right there in front of him, eyes shut tight, limp on the ground.

“You okay?” Sam asks. His voice is raspy, but it’s steady, and Dean can see he’s still standing, gun pointed at Gordon’s head.

“I’m awesome,” Dean laughs, winces at the sting it sends thrumming through him.

The world tilts sideways and he struggles against the pull. It’s like drowning, kicking his feet against the undertow in slow motion. He can feel Sam’s hands on him, helping him to his feet, and his side explodes, bright flowers of light behind his eyes. They pull him down as they fade into darkness, and for a little while, everything goes quiet.

 

*

 

“What happened?” Bobby asks, sounding as frantic and tense as Sam has ever heard him.

“Gordon,” he answers, voice dark. They’re wrapping Dean in another blanket, and Dean’s face is pale, slack, blood flowering through the blanket Sam had wrapped him in, the one he’d found in the trunk of the Impala.

Bobby actually stops for a second, shoots Sam a look. Then his face sets like stone, whatever he’d been thinking pushed aside. He grabs one end of Dean’s body and Sam grabs the other, carrying him in the makeshift sling of blankets. “Stabbed or shot?” he asks.

“Stabbed.”

“Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?”

“Bobby, I don’t even know if he has a real ID, much less insurance.”

Bobby just shakes his head, maneuvers Dean’s upper body into the bedroom.

It takes hours of Bobby’s steady stitching, Sam putting pressure where Bobby tells him to, but finally, Dean’s breathing eases, and Bobby nods.

“He’ll live,” Bobby says, looking at Sam with hard eyes. He doesn’t say anything else, no recriminations, no angry words, and somehow that’s worst of all.

“Good,” is all Sam can manage. He backs away slowly, then turns as he reaches the archway. He wants to stay but he can’t, his head’s too noisy, the room too uncomfortable with both him and Bobby in it. He sinks into a chair at the kitchen table, weary and bruised, body sore and his chest sharp with an ache that has nothing to do with his injuries.

Gordon, Dean almost dying, it’s all too much. There were moments there when he was driving frantically back to Bobby’s where he’d thought he might lose Dean for good, and the panic that climbed through his stomach, spread on through his chest, left him stunned. He’s not sure he’s ever cared about _anyone_ this much.

He really should have known better; it’s not like he’s ever gotten to keep anything or anyone he’s ever cared about.

And this… is all his fault. For being weak enough to let Dean help him, take care of him and look out for him. For not leaving when he should have, that very first morning after Dean saved him. Gordon would have tracked Sam, and Dean would have gone free.

Six weeks on the road with Dean, and already, he can’t imagine his life any other way.

He should have killed Gordon, should have killed Kubrick, instead of knocking them both out and leaving them alive to try again. Anger and hatred surge up inside him like a fist and he grits his teeth together hard enough to feel them slip and grate. He should have known better. Should have _done_ better.

He waits until he can breathe again, until he can think again, and then he knows what he has to do.

On the kitchen table, there’s a yellow legal pad. The first several pages have notes made in Bobby’s neat, tiny script, and Sam leafs through them without looking, tears out a sheet. He sits down at the kitchen table, pen between his teeth, chewing as he regards the blank stretch of paper.

By the time he’s done, there are nineteen crumpled pages with crossed out writing. On the twentieth time, he doesn’t think he gets it right, exactly, but it’s as close as he’s ever going to come.

He caps the pen and tears out the piece of paper. He folds it carefully into fourths, then eighths, and when he’s done, he pushes it into his pocket. He takes the rest of the crumpled pieces—those fragments of thought, all of his _might have beens_ —and feeds them to Bobby’s fireplace one at a time. He watches them burn, brown smoke curling and fire flaring white-orange along the edges.

When he’s done, he walks the hallway to where Bobby sits with Dean and watches them both sleep for a while, Bobby in a bedside chair, Dean still too-pale and fading into the white sheets.

He watches until his eyelids flag and fall, until he’s grabbing the doorjamb in an attempt to stand upright, and finally, then, he walks to the couch, falls into its broken embrace.

For a few hours, he sleeps. There’s no peace for him there, either.

*

The sun is rising when he wakes, slips from the couch and pulls on his shoes. It’s a pink and purple horizon, sun not golden yet, and somehow that makes him feel better.

Bobby’s on the porch, cup of coffee in his hand, and Sam walks out, closes the door behind him with a click louder than it should be.

Bobby stands and stares into the distance, doesn’t say a word, but Sam would bet every dollar he doesn’t have that Bobby knows exactly what he’s thinking, exactly what he’s about to say. So he tries for the thing Bobby might not know, instead. “I know you don’t think much of me, Bobby, but I care about him.”

Bobby turns around, sets his back against the rail, mug steaming trails in front of his face. “I know.” Somber nod, clear understanding in the older man’s eyes.

“That’s why I have to…” Sam stops, throat closing around the words. He pushes past the tightness in his chest, forces them out. “That’s why I have to leave.”

The bird’s are starting to chirp, to wake and come alive, and Sam wants to shoot every single one of them dead with a sudden, inexplicable fury. Bobby looks thoughtful, scrutinizing as he chews on Sam’s words, digests them slowly. “It’ll wreck him.”

Sam bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, fights back the tide of emotion rising inside. “It’s better than him being dead.”

Bobby looks like he might say something—a lot of somethings—but Sam watches him wrestle with each one and discard them in turn, until finally, he simply nods.

The faintest tinge of orange dances along a sleepy world, and it’s a beautiful sunrise, perfect. Sam chokes back his bitterness, bows his head and digs deep for strength. His fingers close around the paper in his pocket, and he feels his jaw clench, feels his heart twist. He takes a breath, cold, crystal clear sharpness on the air that only winter brings. “Give him this for me.” He hands Bobby the note, folded square of yellow paper.

Bobby doesn’t reach out his hand, just looks at Sam. Sam can see the dubious, disapproving glint in the older man’s eyes, reflected gleam of the rising sun catching in his irises. “You’re gonna leave him a ‘Dear John’ letter?” Bobby asks with an arch of his brow.

“If I stay ‘til he wakes up…” Sam trails off, shakes his head, silently pleads with Bobby to understand. “I’ll never be able to do it if I have to talk to him. This is hard enough.”

Bobby looks down at his coffee, thinks for so long Sam wants to scream, wants to throw it at Bobby, dash off the porch and wrench right out of his own skin—anything, just to get it over with. Slow, slow as slow can be, Bobby reaches out, takes the note. He looks at it for a second, turns it over in his hand and finally nods with a grim understanding that makes Sam’s heart hurt even more. “Take care of yourself, kid.”

Sam nods back, relieved to finally be free of the moment. He takes the first step down the stairs, feels his throat seize tight. He puts his hand on the rail to steady himself, hears Bobby shift just beside and behind him. He takes another deep breath, lungs aching with the cold, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He makes it down the steps, through the frozen morning grass. Just keep walking, one foot in front of the other, don’t think.

“Sam.”

Sam swallows hard, feels his stomach twist in knots. He turns around to look at Bobby, hopes whatever the older man has to say won’t gut him like a fish.

Bobby lifts one hand from the porch rail, turns it up for a second before he shakes his head and lays his palm flat again. “I’m sorry as hell it had to be this way.”

He thinks of all the things he’ll miss, all the things that have come to mean home. Dean’s grin, the interior of the Impala, classic rock cranked to eleven. The dingy walls of motel rooms, rest-stops and hunts and silver-plated diners with tired waitresses Dean never failed to flirt with anyway.

“Me, too,” Sam says.

Sam turns, walks without thinking to the edge of the road before his eyes prick, winter bare trees dissolving in a blur. He hefts his pack onto his back, sets his feet on the pavement.

He doesn’t look back.

*

When Dean wakes up, the first thing he thinks of—the first thing he asks for—is Sam. When Bobby tells him, he goes quiet, takes the note and holds it in his palm, stares down at the blankets.

“Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say where he was headed. Kinda would’ve defeated the purpose.”

“When?”

“’Bout this time yesterday morning.”

Dean turns his head and stares out the window. The sky is dark, cloudy slate gray, and water trickles down the outside of the pane in slow streams. He turns the folded note over and over against his palm.

“You ought to let him go, Dean.”

Dean nods. He knows that. Of course he knows that. That’s just common sense, and even if Dean’s never been known to listen to common sense much, he _does_ have it, knows it when he hears it. Just like he knows that knowing isn’t gonna change a goddamned thing.

“It’s for the best,” Bobby says, touches Dean lightly on the shoulder as he rises.

*

He’s antsy, nerves frayed and humming. There’s too much quiet.

A full week and Sam’s getting further and further away.

He can’t sleep.

He rises, blinks and walks to the window. Stares out at the trees encroaching at the edges of the yard. The moon rises, three-quarters full and high above him through the glass, ghostly white bathing him in faint light. It's peaceful here. How many times has he stared through a window when he hasn’t had to worry about what might be staring back? It's like an old friend, like someone he's always known. And the feeling doesn't sit right.

This isn't where he belongs, behind a fortress, behind a series of concentric anti-demon circles. Behind a ring of protection. He's always been a soldier, a man on the front lines, set where the action is, live free or die trying. And he's not too stupid to know that his kind usually dies; it's his role, his place.

Dad lived to a ripe old age for a hunter. Fifty-two is a life long fought, long lived. But dad started hunting late in life, so maybe dad doesn't count. Twenty-five, and there have been times when he’s so tired he's ready to lay down. Stripped of pride, of all need.

He felt it most after dad died; ties severed clean, no reason to remain. He’d gotten stupid, reckless. He knows now he hadn’t really wanted to live. That’s why the vampires got the drop on him that night. And then Gordon and Kubrick had happened along, had saved him, had picked him up, given him purpose, helped him find meaning again.

And he’d betrayed them.

He deserved what they gave him. Deserved worse, probably. Rule one: Never go against your partners—never. Dad taught him that, drilled it into his head all his life and he knows it as clear as day. You do that, people end up dead. So he doesn’t blame them for wanting to kill him.

He just doesn’t care.

He puts his fingers to the glass, pane cold against his fingertips, and rests his forehead there, chills spreading behind his eyes as he stares down to where the ribbon of road winds through the trees in the distance.

He’s tired. But Sam’s out there, somewhere.

*

Dean never does read the note. He tucks it into his battered wallet, behind the pictures of Dad and Sammy, all the important bits of his life all stashed away together.

As the days pass, he finds his fingers straying to it, pulling it free of his pocket, fingers tracing around the smooth edges of folded paper. But he never opens it. He drives miles and miles of road instead, searching for a sign, for a word, for relief that never comes. The hum of the Impala buzzes through his bones, the only constant he's known all his life, no comfort in its lullaby.

"I'm worried about you, Dean."

"I'm fine, Bobby."

Silence from the other end and Dean can imagine Bobby's face, knows what Bobby wants to say, knows that he won't, because Bobby's already told him half a dozen times, and he knows Dean doesn't give a damn.

_\--He left to keep you safe, Dean. Let him._

_I can't._

_Dammit, boy, he's not your responsibility._

_Yes he is._

_Dean... he's not Sammy._

_He might as well be.--_

It was everything Dean ever wanted; a partner, someone close, like family, like a little brother. Someone to share the road with, to hunt with and laugh and fight with. All those things and maybe more. Deep in his heart, in the place secrets go to live, he knows he wanted more. And while Sam was here, it was easy to deny. The bond between them had been almost enough, and Dean had tried to let it be.

But Sam's not here anymore and the ground has fallen away under his feet, left him reeling and stupid and gasping for air. The only want he's ever known that could choke him is always tinged with grief and loss, rising inside him, hollow, insatiable hunger. Mom, Sammy, Dad. All he ever wanted was for any of them to live, to be part of their lives. He can't cheat death, can't win back what he's lost in family, but Sam's not dead.

“You’re stone in love, ya mooncalf,” Bobby says, not unkindly.

The words hit him like an arrow through the heart, sudden sharp pain as he realizes he’s been struck.

_Is that what this is about? Is that what it’s been about all along?_

Love. He’s in love. It rings true, seems so simple, so obvious now that he can’t believe he didn’t realize it before.

Huh. So this is what it feels like.

He says goodbye to Bobby and puts both hands on the steering wheel.

*

He's drunk out of his mind in a backwater bar when he meets Danny. Danny's a little younger than Dean, long face and sharp jaw, gentle eyes so light brown they're almost hazel.

"You look like you could use a friend," he says. 

Dean laughs, short and harsh, almost falls off his barstool. The kid catches him, sits him back upright, and Dean sobers a little, nods and takes another shot. The kid stays close, hip brushing Dean's, warmth of his shoulder solid against him. He leans in, breathy whisper against Dean's ear, heat and comfort in those low tones. "My place isn't far, if you need a place to sleep. We could walk."

It isn't right. Nothing about it is right. But Danny's tall, and his eyes are soft, filled with fire and concern, and his body is warm as it presses against Dean's. Almost hazel, he thinks, and he knows he's haunted, knows he's ruined.

Danny's kisses don't soothe Dean's soul, the touch and tug of his fingers don't heal Dean’s heart, but for a little while, he can forget. For a little while, he can pretend. This body underneath him is lanky, tall, light burn of stubble against his cheek, and when he closes his eyes the room spins around them and he's somewhere else, another time, another place that never was, another name falling from his lips.

*

Days pass into weeks and the ache in Dean’s chest winds tight, ratcheting up into something like panic. He’s anxious, desperate, imagining Gordon finding Sam and killing him a hundred different ways. When Dean runs into a seedy hunter in a dive bar who tells Dean he knows someone who can locate people—some kind of mystic—Dean’s dubious, but even if it’s clutching at straws, it’s better than the nothing he’s had all these weeks.

He finds the place easily enough. It’s another dive, right on par with the sleazy hunter’s tastes. He pays at the door and moves through the crowd, finds a table and orders a drink. It’s dark in here, dingy and filled with cigarette smoke and lonely men who mostly sit alone. Up on stage, a half-naked girl spins around a pole, sway of her body in time with some kind of pop music Dean doesn’t recognize. She’s gorgeous. Statuesque body like a goddess, all curves and toned, tanned muscle, honey-blond hair to her waist and the brightest pair of blue eyes Dean’s ever seen. What she’s doing dancing in a place like this, Dean can’t even begin to fathom. She could be on stage in Las Vegas, LA, somewhere making _big_ money.

He rubs his hand across his chin and leans in on his knees, watching. The second he sits forward, her eyes move and their gazes lock, and he sees a spark of recognition in them. He sits back up straight, watches her warily as she steps from the platform and dances toward him with mincing steps. Her breasts are bare and perfectly round -- nice solid C-cup, Dean thinks -- sprinkled with silver glitter to match the barely-there silver thong. She turns and folds her arms on top of her head, sticks her ass out and circles her hips, and Dean can’t tear his eyes away.

She glances at him over her shoulder and then turns around, leans down so that her face almost touches his and then slides along his cheek without touching him.

“Gant told me you were coming,” she whispers, graze of breath across his ear. She pulls back quick, runs her cheek up the other side of his neck without quite touching him, and whispers in his other ear. “We can’t talk here, too many customer rules.”

Dean turns his head and meets her eyes as she throws one leg over both of his, straddling him. Her face sways back in front of him like a cobra, hips rolling back and forth above his lap, and she leans in, drapes her arms over his shoulders.

“Leave like you’re going home,” she whispers. “Meet me after my shift. Three AM. This address,” she says, and Dean feels her fingers slide down the “v” of his shirt, tuck something thin and papery inside.

She undulates towards him, tilts her hips toward his body and pushes up with her legs rising higher until her glittering crotch is almost right in his face. Naturally, his eyes are drawn there for a moment, then flow up the rest of her curves, taking his time. With just the barest hint of a smile, he leans forward, leaves only a few inches between them, and stuffs several bills into the garter on her thigh.

“I know where Sam is,” she whispers, pure promise as she looks down, her fingertips trailing up his neck. “Know how to find his yellow-eyed demon, too.” And it’s that, more than anything else so far that convinces him, then and there. He’d never so much as mentioned Sam’s name to Gant, much less anything about a yellow-eyed demon. For her to know that, she’s got to have the gift of sight.

She lifts her leg and spins out gracefully, hips rocking side to side as she dances to the guy at the next table. Dean watches her go. He might be impatient to find out what she knows, but Christ she’s got an ass that makes him want to fall down and praise God. He waits a little while longer, until after two more dancers have done their thing and throws a couple bills on the table. 

He drives back to the motel and tries to remember it’s only gonna be five more hours before he finds out what he needs to know. Any other time, he’d be thinking about getting lucky, later, and his dick is definitely interested, but right now he could care less. 

Christ. He really _is_ in love.

*

He spends two hours watching TV without seeing or hearing a word of it. Around midnight, a sharp rap falls on his motel door and Dean slides from the bed, gun in his hand. He tries to peeks out the window, see who’s there, but he can’t make anything out in the darkness.

He moves to the door with his gun, unlocks the bolt and pulls it open.

"Sam?" Dean feels like he's been kicked in the gut, all the air sucked out of his lungs, out of the room. Then the air rushes back in, surging and filling him, relief singing through him. He gets swept up in it a for a second, forgets himself; he’s just so goddamned happy to see him he doesn’t even think as he steps across the threshold, his arms wrapping around those broad shoulders. There's too much he wants to say and all of it sounds like something out of a chick flick, and fuck if he’s gonna go there.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispers.

Dean nods, clears his throat and steps back, slaps his hand against the kid's shoulder. "’Bout damned time you showed up." He doesn’t even have to fake the smile that rises to his lips, and he feels like a stupid little kid on Christmas morning.

Sam steps into the motel room, dim lamplight tinting him in shades of black and yellow. He looks uncomfortable, standing there on the threshold, an awkward stick figure of a boy. His hands are shoved in his jeans pockets, shoulders hunched and chin pointed down, and he looks sad, he looks sorry, grim as slate gray sky over a funeral.

Dean’s mood deflates like a balloon, hunter senses pushing out the relief. He goes from giddy to hardened-steel in seconds flat, eyes narrowing, something dark closing in around his heart.

"What's wrong?" Dean asks, voice hushed, strung taut. 

“This is…” Sam starts, then stops. Looks away from Dean and half-shakes his head as he licks his lower lip. He looks exhausted, defeated somehow. “I know this is gonna sound really strange. But Dean…” his eyes meet Dean’s, deep and serious. “You can't go to meet that girl tonight.”

“What?” Gruff sound escapes him with surprise, blinking and confused. "How do you even know about that?”

Sam lowers his head a little, gives Dean a look so open, so honest and pleading that Dean feels naked in front of him, defenseless. “Please,” Sam says. “Listen to me. If you go talk to her tonight… you’re gonna die.”

“You don’t know that,” Dean says, dismissive, and he feels the tension in him ease an inch. Sam’s just worried, and okay, maybe Sam’s been spying on him—only way he could know any of this—and they’re gonna have a nice little chat about running off on people and then coming back to spy on them without so much as a hello, but that’s later. It can wait for now. “She knows about the yellow-eyed demon, Sam. Maybe we can find out something—a name, _anything_.”

Sam takes another step inside the room, shuts the door gently behind him. He moves closer to Dean, gaze never flagging, and Dean feels Sam’s hand close around his forearm. “Just trust me,” Sam says, voice low and gritty, and he’s more serious, more severe and intense than Dean thinks maybe he’s ever seen him. “She’s going to kill you.”

Dean narrows his eyes. It’s all happening too fast, too many emotions one after the other all colliding and confusing him. "God dammit, Sam, what the hell is going on? How can you know all this?"

Sam twists his jaw, seems to wrestle with something for a moment, and when he meets Dean’s eyes this time, Dean can tell he’s decided something. “I know you’ll die tonight because I saw it.” Sam takes a slow breath, stares into Dean’s eyes, hard and determined. “I get visions of the future, Dean.”

Visions. Powers. Psychic kids.

_Demon._

Dean snatches his arm from the warmth of Sam’s fingers like the kid’s touch _burns_ , staggers backwards a few steps. “Jesus,” he whispers, and he can feel how wide his eyes are, can feel his heart freeze even as his blood starts to boil. He gets the gun up between them, hand shaking, and fuck, all this time and he should have known better, should have fucking _known_ better—

The look on Sam’s face stops him dead, his finger glued to the trigger of the gun, one corner of his eye twitching. He can feel a drop of sweat trickle down, fall into his lashes, the blur-sting of salt for an instant before he blinks it away.

“All along,” Dean says. The betrayal throbs in his chest, words laced with poison. “You knew all along. You were one of those psychic kids…”

“Dean, no,” Sam says, emphatic. “It wasn’t like that. Yes, I knew I had visions, but they stopped after the night in the woods.” Sam shakes his head. “I hoped… I hoped maybe they were gone for good.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Sam, huh?” he nearly shouts, and his voice shakes but his hand stays steady. 

“Because…” Sam holds his hands up, lets them drop. “Because I thought you wouldn’t want me around anymore.”

His hand dips a little, surprise coursing through his veins alongside adrenaline.

“I know I should have told you,” Sam whispers. His eyes are too haunted for a face so young. “But it’s not what you think,” he says, fervently. "The demon… the yellow-eyed demon. He did this to me,” Sam’s voice grows stronger, movements growing bolder as he steps closer to Dean again.

“Back up,” Dean threatens and raises the gun again, and his pulse is a thrashing rush in his head, too fast, too hard.

“No,” Sam says, takes another step closer. He’s so close now that his chest is almost touching the gun, leans his face closer to Dean’s. His pupils are huge, scarce rim of hazel around them, and they’re all Dean can see. Like a pair of black holes and they’re pulling Dean in like gravity.

“If you think,” Sam says, voice even, so close Dean can feel the warmth of his breath. “That I could ever do anything to hurt you…” Sam shakes his head, looks lost. He straightens a little, pushes his chest against the barrel of the gun. “Then shoot me, Dean.”

“What?” Sam’s making about as much sense as Dean’s brain is right now; instincts telling Dean’s hands to throw the gun away, to stare into those deep hazel eyes and—

And what?

“I’d…” Sam goes softer, more quiet. “I’d rather be dead than prove you right.” Bedrock in those words, and Dean feels the weight of them, the honesty of them. And Dean knows he should be holding up the gun, shouldn’t be listening to this, much less falling for it, but dammit, he can’t _help_ it.

“Rather be dead than hurt you,” Sam whispers, fingers grazing Dean’s cheek, and Dean feels something in his chest come undone, knots fraying and falling apart. He feels it unravel, feels himself come loose.

_Inside the arena, there stood two doors, side by side, exactly alike in every way._

There's only one choice here. One door.

Dean un-cocks the gun and throws it on the bed, takes a deep breath, adrenaline skittering through him on the heels of something even more thrilling.

Sam doesn’t move. “I mean it, Dean. If I—”

“I know.” Dean breathes out the words in a rush, and then he’s moving before he can give himself time to think about what he’s doing.

Sam's face is warm as Dean puts his hands on it, skin smooth under Dean's fingers as he drags Sam down and kisses him. Dean swallows Sam's breath of surprise, and then Sam's hands come up to grab Dean's shoulders, mouths a searing hot crush, click of teeth and tease of tongue. Sam moves a little, makes a soft noise that has Dean’s stomach twisting, and then there’s nothing but heat as Sam’s mouth opens, nothing but Sam as he wraps Dean in his arms. Sam spins them around, and Dean feels the hard press of the door slam against his back, trapped between it and Sam's frame.

“God, wanted you so long,” Sam says, hungry sliver of a whisper. And then Sam’s kissing him again, wet, slow plundering of his tongue inside Dean’s mouth. There’s not _enough_ of Sam touching him and Sam’s touching him everywhere. Palm skimming under Dean’s shirt and up his belly, fingers curling in Dean’s hair, fingertips pressing into his jaw, the back of his skull. Sam lets go of him for just a second, yanks his shirt over his head, then yanks off Dean’s, too, and then they’re skin to skin, mouths licking and biting as they meet again.

He’s rougher than Dean would have guessed, or maybe it’s just that they’ve been waiting too long to be gentle. They fall onto the bed in a tangle, Sam’s hands skidding down Dean’s belly, and Dean fits his hands to the groove of Sam’s hips, pulls him in and thrusts up with his body. He can feel Sam’s cock, hard and hot through the seam in his jeans, and Dean feels his own throb, shoved and slotted up against Sam’s, beads of pre-come leaking in a warm rush. Dean bites against Sam’s lower lip, thrusts into him again and groans, every bit of him covered by lean muscle and solid weight. 

Sam works his hands down between them, rubs against Dean’s cock through his jeans and he jerks his hips up into the touch. Sam gets their zippers down, makes short work of their jeans, and then there’s nothing between them, chest to chest, cocks grinding and sliding together, and Dean has the strangest thought that this is how it was always supposed to be.

It’s there and gone, though, just that quick, lost in the glide of skin on skin, their bodies twisted together, locked in a serpentine shape as they hump and thrust, pre-come slicking the way. Dean’s mouth closes on Sam’s throat, sucks blood to the skin and Sam throws his head back, digs his nails into Dean’s hips. He’s quivering like he’s about to come apart and it’s too soon, too soon and Dean needs _more_.

When Sam's hand closes around his cock, aching hard and leaking into those smooth, clever fingers, Dean hisses in a breath, tries to keep from coming then and there. Rocks his hips into the touch, sleek, slick slide of rough velvet. Sam's teeth graze him, leave glancing trails of fire down Dean's jaw, the line of his throat. Sam runs his fingers down under the silky sac of Dean’s balls, touches him lightly there, and Dean groans, twists into the touch. Slow, slippery tongue around the shell of Dean’s ear, and then hot breath, sharp nip of teeth. “Have you ever?” Sam asks.

“No,” Dean says.

Sam teases his fingers across the opening and Dean feels something coil in his belly, fear and heat all at once, but fuck it, he doesn’t care if Sam fucks him or the other way around just so long as they don’t _stop_.

“That’s okay,” Sam whispers, heavy breath between bites of Dean’s mouth. “I want you to fuck me, anyway.”

Dean makes a low sound, deep in his chest, caught somewhere between a moan and a growl, tightens his fingers around the bones of Sam’s hips and flips Sam over.

His eyes lock on Sam’s, burning bright with hunger. “Can’t wait to fuck you, Sam, God, been waiting so long.” 

There’s no lube, but there’s lotion, and the few seconds it takes Dean to get to the bathroom and grab it feel like a lifetime. Sam takes his hand, yanks Dean down on top of him and claims the lotion. 

“Let me,” he whispers.

“Dammit,” Dean hisses. “Condom.” He pulls himself from Sam and gets to his bag, rummages around inside and comes up with a tiny foil packet. When he turns back around, he’s stunned by what’s waiting for him.

Sam’s fucking himself on his fingers, two of them shoved up inside, pink rim of his ass clutching around them, hard. He’s got his lower lip between his teeth and his head thrown back, his whole body a shuddering mass of muscle, veins standing out with the effort, cock rock hard and flushed red, glistening wet, and Dean thinks maybe it’s the hottest thing he’s ever fucking seen.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, swallows hard. His dick is practically throbbing, a steady, twitching ache begging to be touched, but Dean ignores it. He gets back on the bed between Sam’s legs, slides his palms up Sam’s calves and lifts his legs, folds them up. “Yeah,” he whispers, eyes fixed on those long, skinny fingers, skin slick with lotion, pull and tug of Sam’s body, rim clinging as they slide in and out. “So fucking hot.”

Dean pours lotion onto one of his hands, slides a finger up next to Sam’s—never mind that he’s never done this before—and traces the taut, thin skin locked greedily around Sam’s fingers. Sam stiffens and makes a noise just as hungry as his body, pushing blindly against Dean’s finger.

“Inside me,” he gasps. “God, please.”

Oh, Christ, Dean thinks. His dick is diamond hard, and he feels it strain as he slides his index finger alongside Sam’s, tip pressing inside. 

“More,” Sam gasps out, and Dean pushes in slow, elastic ring of muscle searing hot as it closes around him, tighter than any woman he’s ever fucked. Dean’s cock is practically dripping, and he watches as he works his finger in time with both of Sam’s, in and out until Sam’s rigid on the bed, voice keening one long, wordless, solid sound. 

“Dean,” Sam strangles out, reaching for him. “Fuck me, Dean. God, fuck me now.”

Dean doesn’t need any more invitation than that. He lets his finger slide out of Sam’s body and rolls the condom on in seconds flat and lotions up. Gets his arms up under Sam’s legs and bends them in half, dick practically straining at the soft press of Sam’s hole against the tip.

Sam pulls his face down and kisses him hard. “Do it,” he whispers, demanding.

He pushes in, just the tip, feels the tight ring of muscle clamp around the head of his cock, and _Jesus_ , Sam’s blistering hot inside, wriggling against Dean and making noises that go straight to Dean’s dick. He bites down hard against the inside of his jaw and holds on tight, shoving forward with his hips, and he feels Sam spread wide, stretch open around him.

“Feel so good,” Sam chokes. “God, so fucking good, buried inside me.”

It’s not like anything else, so tight, so fucking _hot_ and Sam’s dragging him down again, licking at the inside of Dean’s mouth, hips locked together, smear of sweat and rippling muscle as they move.

“Harder,” Sam gasps, thrusts up into Dean with a twitch of his hips, taking Dean so fast and deep Dean has to catch his breath. “Want you to fuck me hard and slow,” Sam says, running his hands down Dean’s back, fingers digging into the muscles of his ass. “Until it burns. Waited for you so long… Wanna still feel you tomorrow.”

Jesus _fuck_ , the _mouth_ on him. Dean hooks his thumbs into the hollow of Sam’s hips and leans down with all his weight, pins Sam and shoves in with slow, hard strokes, Sam’s body rocking with every one. And fuck yeah, hell yes, Sam’s got his head thrown back, spine arched and legs wrapped around him. Sam’s fingers are losing their grip as he takes it, gives over to it, whispering words that make Dean want to fuck his _mouth_ , too. Sam’s got him more worked up than he can ever remember being, his body like a glove, tight and hot and perfect, and Dean can’t believe they waited so long to do this.

“Sam,” he groans. "Didn't know... didn't know you'd be--"

“I know,” Sam gasps, and Dean shivers, thrusts, and fuck, it's exquisite. Corded velvet, fist-tight around his cock, Sam's arms around him, Sam's tongue in his mouth breathing hard, breathing heavy, the hitch in him when Dean thrusts just right. He wants to drag it out, take his time, but there isn't any, just like there’s no space between them, and he wraps his hands around Sam’s cock, strokes the long, hard girth of it, shoves up and in with a tilt of his hips. He feels Sam shudder as he hits that perfect spot inside him. Sam tenses, clenches against Dean when he slides inside him, and that's it, he's over the edge, belly hot and tight, coiling with almost unbearable tension for a split second before he comes, cock spilling hot and thick as he bites the line of Sam's jaw.

“God, Sam,” he breathes.

Only one door. Lady and the tiger, both.

All pretenses forgotten, everything given, teeth leaving marks so deep they'll bruise tomorrow, and Sam stiffens underneath him, cries out. Fingertips digging deep into the muscles of his shoulders, teeth buried in his neck, and Sam's spurting over the vice of Dean's hand, covering his fingers with pearly slick, burning hot and moaning Dean's name.

"Fuck," Dean whispers, still shivering, Sam convulsing all over, around him. Sam’s muscles flutter all over Dean’s cock, squeeze him mercilessly and Jesus fucking Christ he’s not sure he’s ever felt anything better. 

They lay there for a while, breathing hard, sweat cooling, sticky as it dries, sticker mess between their bellies. Dean manages to lift his head, catch his breath. “Is there a reason we didn’t do this sooner?”

“Yeah,” Sam says with a lazy grin. “I think you were trying to be a gentleman.”

Dean stares at him. “Take it back.” 

“You weren’t very good at it,” Sam amends.

“Damned right,” Dean nods, satisfied.

“Missed you,” Sam says, thumb skimming the curve of Dean’s lower lip.

A little quirk of a smile tugs at Dean’s mouth. “What you get for running off on me.”

He means it as a joke, a lighthearted jab, but somehow, it doesn’t quite come out that way. Something in Sam’s face changes, and his eyes go soft and sad, crinkling at the corners as if in pain.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam says, and Dean can’t take the emotion in those eyes, that voice, can’t meet it head on. 

“Doesn’t matter now,” he says. He lies down, lets his head rest on Sam’s shoulder. It feels weird to be here, pressed together, their hearts still pounding, breathing hard, and Dean thinks he should pull away, roll over to one side of the bed. He’s never… lain with anybody like this afterward, and it’s… awkward. He really should move. 

It stops feeling weird after a minute or two, and a minute or two after that, he’s out like a light.

  
  



	4. I Get Up, I Get Down

**I Get Up, I Get Down**

In her white lace, you could clearly see the lady sadly looking.  
Saying that she'd take the blame  
For the crucifixion of her own domain.  
I get up,  
I get down,  
I get up,  
I get down.

~Close to the Edge III, I Get Up I Get Down, by Yes

 

It’s a deep sleep, and Dean wakes, bubbling up slow as if from underwater, dragging a memory with him, just a fragment of thought that rises to the surface, pulled along behind him.

“Sammy,” Dean breathes and opens his eyes.

Sam’s sitting up, shaded in shadow and lamp light as he looks down at Dean, every muscle limned in gold, his eyes catching the spark from the wall lights as he looks down at Dean. “No one’s ever called me that,” he says. There’s a strange half-smile playing around his mouth. “I like it.”

For a split second, the idea is almost tempting. Still half-asleep, warm and content, there’s more comfort in the thought than revulsion. Sam, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. He wants it, wants it so much he can taste it, bitter rise at the back of his throat. _Leave it_ he thinks, without knowing quite what it means. _There’s only this, only now._

For just a moment, here, on the edge of consciousness, waking from dreaming, he thinks maybe it’s possible. And then he remembers, tiny fingers clutched into motel sheets, huge hazel eyes that trusted him, looked at him like he was a hero.

“No,” he says, shakes his head. “My… my little brother was Sammy.” He swallows against the confession. Watches Sam’s face change, the smile slide from his face, eyes going still and serious.

“Was?” Sam asks, his voice so soft Dean could ignore the question. But it seems important to answer it, somehow. 

“Was,” Dean bites out, nods once. He laces his fingers behind his head, stares at the ceiling. Fucking fake stucco with water stains, like so many other motels over all the years.

Sam takes a breath and Dean tenses. “God, Dean. I’m sorry,” he says.

“It was a long time ago,” Dean shrugs, and the hollow ache in his chest is an old friend, too-well remembered.

“How—” Sam starts to ask and then seems to lose his nerve. Dean feels his stomach clench automatically against the thing he knows is coming. “How long ago?” Sam finishes, finding his bravery.

It’s not the question Dean expected. But that one will come soon enough.

He adjusts against the bed, tilts his head back into the pillow and takes a deep breath. He’s never told anyone, not another living soul. Oh, all the hunters know, stories passed down over the years, rumors and gossip. But this is Sam asking him.

“Sixteen years,” he says, voice grating so it almost hurts. “I was nine. He was five.” He licks his lips and breathes again, feels the tightness coil around his heart, and fuck, he’s never had a day of therapy in his life except that one time in the counselor’s office in tenth grade, but even he knows it shouldn’t still hurt this bad. Most people move on.

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam whispers.

“It was a long time ago,” he says again, and clears his throat. 

Sam’s silent for a while, and Dean’s glad he can’t see Sam’s face, because the only thing holding him together right now is the brown spot on the ceiling, wondering how it got there and how long ago.

“My parents…” Sam begins, then stops. Dean can hear him shift on the bed. “My foster parents,” he amends, voice quiet. “They died in a car crash when I was sixteen. Only family I had.”

Dean nods, pulls his eyes from the ceiling to look at the wall. “Must’ve been hard,” he says.

“It was. I had to go back to the foster home.” Sam pauses and Dean can feel the bed move a bit, see Sam shake his head back and forth. “No one wants a kid that old,” he says with a trace of bitterness. “I stayed there for two years, finished high school and started studying for college. Applied to Stanford, got accepted. I went and never looked back.” Sam falls silent again, picks at the bedspread—Dean can feel it, Sam’s hand near the bare skin of Dean’s waist.

“I get the feeling you’d have made a hell of lawyer,” Dean says, and he doesn’t have any basis for it, nothing to go off of except belief. Sam’s smart, had to be to get accepted to a place like Stanford. 

“Yeah,” Sam says with a laugh like nothing’s funny. “Maybe.” Dean tilts his face inside the cradle of his hands, sees Sam look down at the bedspread, expression dark, somehow sad. “But then… at the end of my second year… I met this girl…”

Dean can’t help an ironic smile at that. “Always a woman, ain’t it?”

“No,” Sam says softly, voice vibrating low with bass. His eyes flash up to Dean’s for a second, a skittish kind of certainty in them, and Dean feels it hit him like a blow. But Sam doesn’t hold the moment, lets it slip, looks back down a the bed and twists the coverlet between his fingers. “But this girl… it wasn’t like that. I…” Sam sighs, lifts his head and stares off somewhere in the middle distance. “I was eating lunch in the quad one day, and she came and sat down next to me. She was new there, and she was… really cute. Not beautiful, but alive, you know? Charming. She sat down with me and we had lunch, talked about school, things like that. I really liked her, a lot, really fast. And when we were done eating, she asked if I’d walk her to her apartment.”

Dean turns his head to the side, fingers still laced around the back of his skull, watches Sam’s face now that Sam isn’t watching him. There’s a look in Sam’s eyes like a man caught in a dream, or maybe a nightmare.

“So I did. And we walked way out on the campus, to the edges of the buildings where there were barely any people, and she was talking, upbeat and bright and telling me stories about her life… and then…” Sam bites deep into his lower lip and his head falls a notch. “And then she turned on me. And threw me up against the wall. Not with her hands,” he says, meaningfully. 

“Then how--?” Dean starts to ask, and then it hits him.

“With her mind,” Sam says, meeting Dean’s eyes. “I was terrified… I’d never seen anything like that. I couldn’t… I couldn’t move. And she laughed, and told me that I was special like her, that she had visions just like me, and that she’d seen me in one of them. Told me that I was competition… for some kind of crown, and that she was going to kill me.” Sam swallows hard then, looking away, and he’s quiet for so long that Dean thinks maybe he’s not going to finish. Then he takes a breath, nods his head once.

“I’d only had one vision at that point—I didn’t even know what it was. I thought… you know… maybe I dozed off in class and had a crazy dream or something. I didn’t know anything about psychic kids, or powers,” he says, speaking like he still doesn’t fully understand. “I didn’t know what was happening… I just knew I had to get away or she was really going to kill me. And something… something started to happen in my mind,” he says, the words leaving him slowly, with difficulty. “It was like my mind opened up… like my brain hollowed out and there was all this infinite space inside, all these things I’d never imagined. I tried to push with my body… But… I pushed with my mind, instead.” His voice trembles over the words and his hands move across the bedspread like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “She… she went flying. Hit the building right across the walkway… and...” He takes a deep breath. “She hit it so hard that it killed her.” He lifts his chin, seems to dig deep for strength, turns to look at Dean. “I killed her.”

Dean looks at him for a few seconds, not saying anything, sees the anguish in Sam, the sadness. “You did what you had to do,” he says, voice low and firm.

Sam lets out a breath like he’d been holding it, sags a little. “I know,” he says, resignation in his voice, but he’s not like Dean. Dean knows if it’s to the death with a human, then he’s gonna be the one walking away, and he’s not gonna waste one second feeling bad about it.

“Before she died, she told me there’d be more. More people like _us_ coming after me. That they were hunting me… I didn’t know what to do. I killed her... So… I left. I was so scared of my own powers I never tried using them again. I got good at running. And I’ve been running ever since.”

“So you knew about these psychic kids way before Bobby ever mentioned them,” Dean says, and it’s not a question.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and shifts his jaw. “I knew about them. And I knew they thought I was one of them. But I didn’t understand what it meant, how I could be… until the yellow eyed demon came to me in my dreams. He was the one who told me…” Sam’s face clenches in disgust. “He _showed_ me, how he fed me blood while I was still a baby, crying in my crib.”

Dean feels his fingers clench, anger a couple years too late for a crime he never even knew had been committed.

“And still,” Sam says with a hazy, bitter sound not quite like a laugh. “I get the feeling it’s nothing compared to what happened to you.”

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t want to tell his stories, doesn’t want to end up punching walls or worse. “I’m not gonna let them get you, Sam,” he promises, voice level. “Not the demon, not the fucking spoon-bending kids.”

Sam presses his lips together between his teeth, and his eyes going even darker, liquid in the dim light. “I know,” he whispers.

“Good,” Dean says, voice gruff, and he settles his head back into the lattice of his fingers. “And,” he adds, lightening his tone a bit. “Seems like you saved my life again,” he shrugs, “so it’s my turn, anyway.”

“I owe you more than I can ever pay back,” Sam says, raw and heartfelt, earnest and honest, and Dean feels his stomach drop out from under him. He turns his head again, words on the tip of his tongue, something crass and smart-assed, the only response he knows how to make to that kind of confession, and Sam falls on him as he moves, mouth covering Dean’s, hot and slick and fast. Swirl and tangle of tongue and Sam’s got his hands in Dean’s hair, pulling his head off the bed, deeper into his mouth. Dean reaches out, fingertips digging into the soft places between the muscles in Sam’s shoulders, yanking him in tight, rising up to meet him. And then he stops—yanks Sam back by his shoulders and stares him right in the eye. Mouth kissed deep pink, eyes slanted and glittering low, lust and need and something deeper Dean can’t quite face.

“Don’t do this because you think you owe me,” he warns, hissing out the words.

And incredibly, Sam’s mouth splits in a slow grin, eyes dancing now. “I’m not doing this because I owe you, Dean. I’m doing this because you’re hot.”

Dean bursts out laughing, and it feels good, better than anything he’s felt in almost a month. It’s not the whole truth and they both know it, but neither of them is willing to face or admit that, so Dean lets Sam shove him back down against the mattress, pin his wrists above his head and kiss him so hard for so long that Dean stops laughing, stops thinking with anything but his dick, rock hard and aching between his thighs. 

Sam pushes his wrists deeper into the mattress, slides his tongue up the length of Dean’s arm. “You’re starting to bruise,” Sam whispers. “God, so fucking hot. My marks on you.” Sam’s voice is like pure sex, gritty and thick, and he takes his time, traces around the shape of every bruise on Dean’s arms with his tongue, pressing in against the center of every one. He licks and ducks and teases until Dean’s hips are arching against the air, until he’s finally had enough. He gathers his body, shoves up and twists, throws Sam off and over, flat on his back against the bed.

Dean’s on him in a second, years of honed instincts lending him speed, and then he’s got Sam’s arms pinned over _his_ head. Sam whines and moans and begs, but Dean just grins, takes his time, licks around each of Sam’s nipples and leaves a glistening trail, sucking the hard pebble between his teeth for a second before moving on to the next.

“You know I could kick your ass,” Sam hisses.

“Points for effort,” Dean says and grins, bites into the skin at the edge of Sam’s hip and feels Sam surge underneath him. “A little too desperate, though,” he chuckles, and drags his mouth lower, lets his cheek slide against the hot, throbbing skin of Sam’s cock.

“Jesus, Dean,” Sam gasps, rises against him again.

He lets his mouth close around the head of Sam’s dick, feels it twitch and leak pre-come into his mouth. Keeps Sam busy while he slicks up his fingers with lotion. He sucks Sam until Sam breaks, begging and almost sobbing with need, and finally he lets his mouth pop free, slides up Sam’s body and looks down at him with a broad grin, tip of his cock pressing against Sam’s hole.

“Fuck. The condoms,” he swears, starts to roll over and reach for them.

“Don’t care,” Sam grates, fingernails digging into the flesh of Dean’s ass, urging him forward. He feels Sam’s body grip him, tightest, sweetest pressure clamp around the tip.

“I’ve never—” Dean hisses, tries to pull back.

“Me neither,” Sam hisses back, promises, and Dean knows better. God, he knows so much better than _all_ of this, but life stopped making sense a few exits back, and shoving aside a lifetime of public school system health classes suddenly doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

He sinks inside Sam like sliding into melted butter, hot flesh pulsing, brutally tight all around him. Jesus fuck, it’s even _better_ than the first time, flesh to flesh, sinking hard and deep, Sam’s thighs twitching around him. He sucks Sam’s tongue inside his mouth and bites down hard, feels Sam moan and thrust underneath him, thrusts back, hands sliding underneath Sam’s shoulders, tugging him down the bed to center him and then thrusting sharp and deep, rocking upward and scraping over that sweet spot of pressure inside him. Sam goes stiff, digs into Dean’s ass muscles so hard that Dean thinks he might tear them off the bone, and then he’s answering, rocking up into Dean with a sound so rich and thick that Dean’s hips move of their own accord, shuddering and thrusting in slow measure. He puts his hands on Sam’s shoulders, pins him there and fucks him, long, slow, hard, deep. It’s like torture, Sam clenched all around him, arms, body, legs and ass, squeeze of nails and muscles, pushing him inside, harder, deeper until all he can do is hold Sam, fuck in hard with his hips, shivering with quick thrusts.

“Dean,” Sam mutters, his mouth swollen and slow. “God, please.”

Dean reaches down, takes Sam’s cock in his hand, flushed and rock hard and so slick, and fuck, Jesus fucking Christ, one stroke, two, and then Sam’s making noises so crazy and loud that Dean has to lean down, kiss him, swallow the sound. He lolls his hips to the right, then the left, slams inside, relentless as Sam comes, hot and slippery over his fingers, body seizing all around him, and fuck, it’s sweet, velvet heat clutching tight, fisting his cock, and Dean surges, flies over the edge. Thrusts his head down and bites deep into Sam’s throat, shaking his head back and forth like an animal, and Sam reaches up, grabs the back of Dean’s head between his hands and pulls it in harder, throws back his head and bares his neck.

“Yeah, Dean,” he whispers, guttural and broken, stomach muscles still convulsing with aftershocks. He holds Dean there until it’s over, and Dean comes back to himself with tiny twitches and shocks.

He’s still laying there on top of Sam, no will or want to move, fucked out and completely spent. He lets go of Sam’s neck, slides down his chest, the sound of Sam’s heartbeat loud in his ear.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Sam whispers, promises, fingers threading through Dean’s hair. 

“Damned right it’s gonna be okay,” he says.

And that’s all there is; the steady rhythm of Sam breathing, heart beating into Dean’s ear, fingers threaded through his hair. As Dean falls back into sleep, merciful and dreamless, he thinks maybe that’s all there ever was.

*

In the morning, Dean gets to the shower first, amazed when Sam joins him, naked and unabashed, grin twitching at the corners of his mouth for a second before he falls to his knees, takes Dean’s half-hard cock in his mouth. It’s more than half-hard before Sam’s done, water beading and pulsing over his skin with searing heat as he grips Sam’s head in hands, hips thrusting in and out of his mouth until finally he stiffens and pulses, coming straight down Sam’s throat, Sam swallowing every drop.

Sam stands up, grinning as wipes at his mouth, sets his arms on Dean’s shoulders. Dean leans into him, a little weak and still shuddering.

“You hungry?” Sam asks.

*

Breakfast is short but sweet, Dean barely paying mind to the sexy waitress that takes their order. 

“Just for the record,” Dean says after the waitress leaves. “How was that stripper chick gonna kill me?”

“She was a succubus,” Sam answers and Dean laughs, starts coughing, and it takes him a couple second to stop.

They talk about cases, about psychic kids until she comes back, vaguely pouting as she sets down their food. They eat, stealing glances with silent thoughts, and it’s not until they’re leaving, waitress paid and watching after them longingly that Sam remembers.

They get into the Impala and Sam rests back in the seat, stretches his legs out and feels more at home than he has in as long as he can remember. But it won’t go, that nagging thought buzzing around his head like a bee, zooming in close every time he thinks it’s gone.

Dean’s drumming his fingers against the steering wheel in time to AC/DC, looking happier and more satisfied than Sam ever remembers seeing him.

“Dean,” Sam says, looking carefully out the window of the Impala. “Did you ever read my note?”

Dean goes utterly still for a moment, which for Dean, is actually an accomplishment of some measure, and Sam’s heart falls inside his chest, wishing immediately that he hadn’t asked.

Then Dean takes a breath and shrugs, and Sam can hear the grin implicit in his voice. “No. I knew you were coming back, dude.” Shrug of Dean’s shoulders out of the corner of his eye. “Not even a thing.”

So cavalier. _Too_ cavalier, and Sam knows, in that moment, more than he ever has, how much he hurt Dean when he left. Sam feels his heart rise up and catch in his throat. Stares out at the trees passing by and puts his fingers to his mouth. And if his throat burns, it’s only because he drank his coffee too fast. And if the scenery blurs as it swishes by, it’s only because the sun is in his eyes.

*

They tear a swath through the mid-western states, cutting down lycanthropes, vengeful spirits, three urban legends, one angry gypsy with an eye for a curse, and a lone black-eyed demon. They hunt and they fight and they fuck, synchronicity like destiny, like prophecy called down from on high. They fall into bed, dirty and desperate, streaked with grime, covered in bruises and blood, salt of sweat and stench of musk, mouths and hands and bodies blending into each other until Sam can’t tell the difference between him and Dean. Until it doesn’t matter anymore.

They’re a team, united. Two halves of one whole, yin and yang. The idea, the symbolism, grows in Sam’s mind as they travel across the country. Sometimes, they can’t even wait, can’t even make it to a hotel room. Dean yanks the Impala over to fuck him across the front seat, face lit by the green luminescence of dashboard lights, body shuddering, mouth twisting out Sam’s name, leather grinding into his back, his ass, as he takes it all, begs for more.

They don’t bother with two queens anymore. More motel owner’s smile and leer at them than ever before, but neither one of them cares. Hunting is perfect, synchronous rhythm, like fucking, two bodies twisting in a dance likes two flames in a single fire, independent, joined at the base. They take it for what it’s worth—and milk it, finally—until they both know there’s nothing that can stand against them. Nothing that can separate them.

There are differences between them, though.

They’ve got a demon caught in a Devil’s trap in an old abandoned warehouse, thing surging against the edges. It’s going on about some bigger plan, how killing it won’t matter

“Did you know,” Dean asks, “that you’re only here because you’re lucky? Because you managed to climb out of Hell at just the right time?”

The possessed man stops, stares at them, and Dean turns his head to the side, looks at Sam. “He didn’t know,” Dean says, conspiratorially. 

“No, he didn’t,” Sam agrees, with a quick nod of his head.

“You think there’s a plan,” Dean says to the demon, and Sam makes perfect quotation marks across the word “plan” as Dean says it, shotgun slung low around his waist. He can see Dean look, see Dean almost laugh out loud at the sight. 

“But there isn’t,” Dean goes on, voice querulous for a split second before he gets it under control.

“You’re random,” Dean says with finality, stepping closer to the creature. “And you’re history.”

Sam begins to speak Latin on Dean’s cue, never slowing when the man’s head twists, shakes back and forth like something out of a horror movie. He hopes the body will survive, that the man isn’t dead yet. But he knows what he has to do.

When it’s over, the man’s body lies crumpled and twisted, broken and dead, bleeding inside the circle. Sam swallows hard, closes the book and looks at Dean. Dean looks back, doesn’t seem to know what to think for a second before he nods back.

“It’s done,” Dean says, and Sam wants it to be that simple. Dean’s got a solidarity Sam can’t touch, clearly drawn boundaries he can’t fully understand. Pure logic says they did what they had to, but in the end, the results are no less for what they’ve done.

It doesn’t seem to trouble Dean as he stalks from the warehouse.

Sam stops him just outside the doorway, hand on Dean’s shoulder, a gesture that by now should seem natural, but doesn’t. It’s Sam calling Dean to a halt, staring Dean straight in the eyes.

“That was an innocent human in there,” Sam says, stepping closer to Dean.

“I know,” Dean says, looking up at him, and he can see that Dean _does_ know. It’s just that Dean doesn’t care. That he understands more than Sam ever will; the sacrifices that have to be made. “You know _we_ didn’t kill him. The demon killed him a long time ago.”

“I just… I wish there was something we could do,” Sam says, and Dean looks down, nods for a second. 

“Can’t save everyone. You let it get to you, it’ll eat you alive.”

“Cynical,” Sam says.

“Survival,” Dean corrects, looking up at him, and Sam wonders what it must have been like, growing up in this lifestyle. The corner of Dean’s mouth curls a little. “Tell you what. The day we get a chance to save the whole entire world all at once, I’ll let you do it.

Sam can’t help but smile at that.

*

They’re in Nebraska when it finally happens. Nebraska, land of corn and open skies, and Dean thinks if he never sees corn again it’ll be way too fucking soon. Fucking barns, too. After the seventh time Sam says, “Dean! Look! It’s another unnecessarily huge, evil barn,” Dean’s about ready to smack him. 

“I’m telling you, Sam. There’s no reason for _anyone_ to ever have a barn that big. What do you think they’re doing with all that space, huh?”

“Storing hay?” Sam offers, innocent as can be, like they haven’t had this conversation six times already.

“Hay,” Dean snorts, all seriousness as he looks at Sam across the seat. “You really haven’t watched enough horror movies, have you?”

Sam thinks about that for a second. “Not enough to be as paranoid as you.”

“Paranoid,” Dean scoffs. “We’ll see.”

“Hey, Dean! Look!”

Dean grits his teeth and grips the steering wheel hard.

_Fucking barns._

They’re hunting a demon, and the people in the scattered small towns they find along the way remind Dean too much of something right of _Children of the Corn_. The first one they stop in, Dean throws Sam a look so hard and righteous it could cut diamonds. After the third stop in twenty house towns with no post office and bars full of smoking corn cobs and bright, suspicious eyes, Dean stops stopping.

“Come on, dude,” Sam says from the passenger seat, book in his lap. “You’re not really buying into this whole _Children of the Corn_ thing, are you?”

“I refuse to be infected by your anti-horror-movie-watching ways,” Dean grates, fingers shifting on the steering wheel. “You ever see Event Horizon?”

“Yeah… the one with the haunted ship.”

“Hell-ship, Sam. And you remember the part where Laurence Fishburne’s character sees the video tape of everyone gouging their eyes out and slinging their intestines like party streamers?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, nodding. “That was kinda messed up.”

“Kinda?” Dean asks, arching a brow. “You did actually _see_ this movie, right? Not the just preview?”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam says, sounding annoyed. “I saw it.”

“So do you remember what Laurence Fishburne says when he sees that tape and finally figures out what’s going on?”

Sam purses his lips. “He says something like, ‘we’re leaving’.”

“Right. It’s like Eddie Murphy’s whole riff back in the day. ‘Too bad we can’t stay’.”

“Dean… You’re not black.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be smart,” Dean mutters, and slams on the gas.

It’s the gas that proves their undoing, in the end. They stop at a strange little place with a sign that offers just “Gas”. There’s an old man behind the counter who doesn’t speak, yards of beard, and Dean’s not even sure he’s got a mouth, but he’s sure if the old man did, he’d say something sinister and cryptic. It’s getting near dark and Dean’s getting antsy, eyes flicking toward the sunset. The sun sinks low in the sky, belly scraping the edge of the horizon.

“I think you’re overreacting,” Sam is saying as Dean walks back out to fill up the car. “I mean, yeah, it’s probably a demon, and maybe it’s in the cornfield, but that doesn’t mean it’s got the whole _state_ wrapped around its finger.”

Dean doesn’t bother to reply, just takes the handle and shoves it into the tank, eyes the sky.

“Dean…” Sam says, and Dean can hear him rolling his eyes. “We _are_ the stupid white girls who go down to the basement with a flashlight to investigate the strange noise. You realize that, right?”

“Sam,” he hisses, slitting his eyes. “Will you shut the hell up?”

“What?” Sam asks. “Are you afraid the _corn’s_ going to hear us?” Sam gestures, exasperated, toward the fields across the road, and his expression alone is enough to make Dean want to murder him. Or maybe fall down laughing.

He doesn’t know what it is, can’t pin it down exactly, but he knows _something_. He feels it. Something’s off about this whole thing. And still he’s tempted to make a joke about corn having ears, and that’s almost enough to make him feel better, especially when the handle clicks off, tank full.

“Let’s go,” he says.

The land’s so flat that Dean can see it when the horizon eats the last sliver of burning orange. The sky is purple and pink, shot through with silver clouds. It’s beautiful, distractingly so, and yet, Dean’s still completely aware, completely ready when the thing steps from between the corn stalks into the road, tall and dark.

“Here we go,” he says, and cuts the wheel, sliding out. The ass end of the Impala slingshots around the front, corn and corn and corn for what seems like eternity, and the car does a one-eighty, squealing to a halt with its headlights trained on the thing standing in the middle of the road.

“What the fuck?” Sam gasps.

“Told you,” Dean mutters and throws the car in reverse, tires squealing hard enough to make him wince. Smoke flies, curling up in a thick cloud around them. Dean can’t see a motherfucking thing—doesn’t care either—what’re they gonna do? Drive over some corn?

Yeah. He’ll cry about the senseless death of baby cornstalks later.

They fly backwards, tires screaming, and all Dean can smell is smoke, gritting his teeth and grinning to beat the devil… until the Impala hits solid wood. There’s a moment of impact, a moment of utter stillness, silence, and Dean looks at Sam, and Sam looks at Dean—and then they’re flying forward, car seat left behind them. Dean hits the windshield hard, and the glass cracks in time with a bone in his cheek. It doesn’t break, glass cracking like a frozen puddle, and he bounces back, bloody and stunned and gasping on the front seat.

For a second, all he can do is breathe, blink and realize he’s still alive.

“Sam?” he asks, and it’s a plea as much as it’s anything. 

The groan from the passenger seat is a relief, and for a second, Dean lets go, relaxes and lets the darkness swirl up to catch him. 

*

It could be seconds, minutes, _hours_ later when he opens his eyes again, and the first thing he does is sit bolt upright. His whole body screams in protest, and his face bitches loudly about windshields and fucking demons. 

“Sam?”

Sam’s lying in the passenger seat, deep gash in his forehead, hairline to eyebrow, slow blood trickling from it. It’s already going black and purple around the edges, and Dean feels something like panic flutter inside his chest as he reaches out to grab Sam by the shoulders. “Sam! Sam!”

“Ungh…” Sam groans, shoving at Dean’s hands, and Dean lets go.

“Jesus, dude, I thought you were dead,” he says and sighs.

Sam blinks, presses a hand to the side of his head. “Um… I think we’ve got bigger problems than that,” Sam says.

Dean follows his gaze out the front window of the car and feels his heart sink. And then he catches sight of the color of the wood that’s laying across the windshield of the Impala. And then… then he’s just fucking angry. 

Fine. Just _fine_ , he thinks and slams the car door open. It catches in splintered wood, sends a plank clattering off into the night, and Dean pulls himself to his full height, slams the door shut. He can hear Sam clamber out of the passenger side, not quite as graceful, but at least he’s on his feet.

Amber eyes glow at them from the center of the headlights, translucent and inhuman.

“Good job on hitting the broad side of a barn,” the demon says, admiring the Impala.

_Fucking barns._

Dean leans back out of curiosity, tilts his head up. “Huh,” he says, looking at Sam. “Bales of hay.”

Sam cuts his eyes at Dean like he’s un-fucking-believable, but that’s okay, because Sam doesn’t know Dean’s had the Colt tucked into his waistband all day like an ace in the hole. He takes two steps forward through the rubble, slides his hand to the base of his spine and pulls out the ivory handle. 

“Say goodnight, Gracie,” he says, and levels on the thing.

“Goodnight, Gracie,” the demon says, and the Colt rips from Dean’s grasp, flies to the demon’s hand, pointed straight at Dean.

_Fuck._

Dean’s back hits the barn hard, and he’s pretty sure he’s got splinters on top of his raging windshield-induced headache.

“You,” Sam says. Dean can’t move much more than his eyes, but it’s enough to tell him that Sam’s pinned right beside him. And the tone of Sam’s voice is more than enough to tell Dean who they’re up against.

_Fuck._

“Let Dean go,” Sam snarls, trying to surge against the demon’s hold. “I’m the one you want, right?”

“Sorry, kiddo,” the demon says, amused. It turns away, yellow eyes settling on Dean like skittering spiders. “This is the one I’m looking for.”

And Dean forgets all about his splinters, all about his headache, all about the fucking barns. “What? Me? Why?”

“Because you’re special.”

_Aren’t you going to tell me how special I am, Ruby?_

It doesn’t make any kind of sense. “You mean like… short-bus ‘special’?” he asks, not sure whether or not to be offended.

“Six of one…” it says, canting its head. “You _are_ Dean Winchester, right?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” Dean says, shrugs the best he can. And shit, the thing knows who he is. 

“See,” the demon says, “that’s what I thought.”

“But…you’re looking for Sam…”

“Oh.” The demon chuckles. “You didn’t know.” It slides a glance towards Sam, mirthful and cold. “He didn’t know.”

“You know who _I_ am?” it asks.

“Yeah. You’re the freak stalking Sam’s dreams, telling people he’s the Antichrist. Not real smart of you, by the way.”

The demon shakes its head, disappointed. “Dean. Come on,” it says, low leer, feigning magnanimousness. “You really think I'd make such a big deal out of the _actual_ Antichrist? What kind of demon would I be, giving away my own game plan?”

Dean frowns, not following, and he steals another glance at Sam, sees the same confusion on his face.

“Smoke and mirrors,” it says. “Misdirection, so when anyone came looking for kids with an unusual background--say, whose mom died in a ceiling fire and showed up with powers—they’d be looking at other kids.” 

“But then,” it tilts back his head, mock sighs around a wolfish grin. “You had to go and ruin that. Saving little Sammy from the fire, you didn’t do anything but dote on the kid after that.” The demon shrugs. “You would have made him more important than everything else, and I couldn’t have that.”

“You,” Dean says, forcing the words out through numb lips. “It was you, wasn’t it? You burned my house, killed my mom, and when that wasn’t enough, you killed Sammy, too.”

“I had to make sure you were sharp, Dean. That you had a purpose.”

“You killed him!” Dean growls, trying to run forward, and the demon laughs, harsh and brittle on the spring warm air.

“Oh, Deano. I didn’t _kill_ him. I needed him. I needed to make sure that kid…” Its eyes slide sideways, sly and coy, to rest on Sam. “Would be around at the right time, to _protect_ you.”

Dean’s eyes narrow, and angry as he is, he can feel a sliver of ice work into his heart, thread through his veins. “What do you mean?”

The demon sighs and shakes its head. “You’re cute. Not too bright though, are you? That’s another reason I needed the kid around. See,” the demon goes on, taking a step closer to Dean. It leans in, conspiratorial, and cuts its eyes toward Sam as it speaks. “Sammy here’s the brains of the operation. But you… you’re the instrument.”

The meaning is unmistakable, and it hits Dean like a sledgehammer to the stomach, forces all the air out of him. Dean’s pretty sure he’s forgotten how to breathe. His throat closes, and for a second, he feels like he’s suffocating. He swallows and sucks in a desperate breath. “No…”

“I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out already.” The demon leers at Dean, face wrinkling. 

He feels all his blood turn to ice, drain to his feet. “You mean—you mean _I’m_ …”

“You’re the one, Neo,” the demon says and winks.

“And Sam—”

“Is your brother. Should have taken the blue pill.”

He thinks the world might have just spun out from under his feet. Breathe in, breathe out. Thump thump thump steady beat of his heart, and it’s the only sound he can hear.

“No.”

“Why do you think you _saved_ him, Dean? You knew it. You felt it on some level. Never count out family, huh?”

“You’re lying,” Sam hisses, pushing hard against the demon’s power.

“Stay, Fido.” The demon chuckles, holds Sam easily in place despite his obvious rage. He moves closer to Sam, looks him in the eye. “And you, Sam. Why do you think it was Dean that found you? Why do you think Gordon found Dean? I made it physically impossible for the two of you to hurt each other, the way I bound you two together. I put all the pieces into play, but I never expected Dean to just _go_ for it, right off the bat. ” The demon shakes his head again. “I thought it would take him a few times of not being able to kill you before he went buddy cop on you. I knew you were lonely, Dean, but that’s pathetic, even for you,” the demon says. “Sloppy.”

“Why?” Sam demands, lifting his chin. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“I needed you to be the decoy, protect Dean when he really needed it. And I needed Dean to _think_ he was protecting you, needed the world to think so. Nobody was looking at Dean. No, they only had eyes for little Sammy.”

“It’s not true,” Sam rages, eyes flashing, veins standing out like cords in his neck.

“You can’t remember anything before you were five, right Sam?” the demon asks, almost cordial. “And Dean, how old was Sammy when I started that fire? The second one, I mean.”

“No.” Dean can’t tell what the sound is that works its way up from his chest, but he’s pretty sure he’s never heard anything more broken.

“Oh, come on. I thought you’d be happy, Dean. You got Sammy back.”

“You bastard,” he spits.

Sam’s eyes are wide, face pale, thin and shocked as Dean stares the demon down. “Dean, you’re not seriously buying this.”

Dean can’t answer, sick to his soul, dinner rising in his throat. But he’s buying it, all right, like the final piece of some puzzle he didn’t even know he was working on just fell into place.

“Fucking your brother, Dean,” the demon says and clucks its tongue. “That’s a pretty big sin.”

“That your doing, too?” Dean asks.

“No, Deano,” the demon grins. “That one was all you. The things you find out at family reunions, huh?” It lifts its hands, amused, and Dean lets his eyes slide shut for a moment, lost.

“Well,” the demon says after a moment, backing up a pace. “It’s been fun. I’ve got what I came for,” it says, twirling the Colt over the back of its hand. “You boys have a nice night.”

“I’m not your boy,” Dean grates out. “Never gonna be.”

“You’ve got time. You’ll change your mind,” the demon says with a nasty grin. It turns its back, starts to walk away, pauses and smirks over its shoulder. “Call me when you do.”

*

They spend two days in the hospital. They stitch Sam up and Sam doesn’t have a concussion, but Dean does, and there’s an irony in there somewhere. Despite Dean’s fears, his cheek isn’t broken, or even fractured. But he did knock it and his skull really hard, and he’s got a rainbow-colored assortment of bruises to prove it.

The Impala takes another day in the shop, so they get a room nearby. It’s the first chance they’ve really had to talk since the whole thing happened, and Dean’s sitting on the edge of the bed, hands clasped together just a little too tight.

“I’m gonna be the Antichrist,” he says, fingers twisting together. He gives a short, brutal laugh. “You think that comes with a good benefits package?”

“Dean. Come on,” Sam says, kneeling in front of him. “You’re the one that told me demons lie.”

“What? You _wanna_ be the Antichrist Superstar?”

“Dean,” Sam leans in and Dean can’t help it—he flinches, just a little. Sam’s face falls and he pulls back. He bows his head, voice low. “How can you believe what he said… about you and me? I mean, come on, why would he tell us that?”

“To mess with our heads,” Dean answers, and Sam nods.

“See?”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Dean says, looks down at his hands. “Demons tell the truth sometimes, if they think it’ll cause more damage than a lie.”

It’s too much information to take in. How can he be expected to cope with all this when everything’s so… the way it is? He’s spent his whole life believing one thing, and now, finding out it might not be true… that Sam’s really his brother? Oh, and don’t forget that pesky Antichrist thing. It’s been two days and he still can’t tell which way is up or down.

“I don’t…” _I know it. I feel it. It feels **right**_. “I don’t know. But Sam… if it’s true… if you’re my…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam says, looking up, sudden light in his eyes. “It doesn’t change what we are.”

“Maybe not for you,” Dean says, with a slow nod. “But it does for me.”

“Why?”

“Sammy was--” he breaks off, lowers his voice, takes a second and gets a grip. “I had a little brother once,” he starts again, voice calmer now. “I remember him. I changed his diapers. Played with him. Tucked him in at night. I _took care_ of him. I _remember_ , Sam,” he says, looking desperately into Sam’s eyes. “And if it’s true… if you’re that little boy… that changes everything.”

“And you think the only reason it doesn’t change anything for me is because I don’t remember,” Sam says, eyes hard, voice tight. He nods once, stiff as he rises to his feet.

“Isn’t it?” Dean asks, more emphatic than he means to. “I mean how could it not change everything, Sam?”

“Even if it’s true… even if we share the same blood, it doesn’t change how I feel,” Sam says. “Does it change how you feel, Dean?” Sam asks, voice cold, challenge in his eyes.

“No,” Dean says, feeling sick. He rubs his hands together, looks away from Sam. “But it changes what I have to do.”

“Dean…” Sam steps toward him, starts to reach out and Dean gets up, walks to the bathroom and shuts the door. He sits down on the toilet lid and pulls out his wallet, untucks the picture of Sammy for the first time in years. It’s gotten a little more worn, a little more ragged around the edges, but he looks just like Dean remembers him. Those hazel eyes… the same eyes he’s been staring into for the last five months or more. That smiling mouth, the same one that’s been—

Jesus.

He gets to his feet and puts the picture away. Strips off all his clothes and stands under the shower spray until it turns cold, stands there until he’s shivering, freezing, his hands and toes wrinkled and purple, until he’s so cold it almost hurts and he can’t think about anything else.

*

They spend the rest of the night without talking, TV speaking into the loud silence between them. When it’s time for bed, Dean curls up on the floor and the _look_ Sam gives him is enough to keep him awake half the night, tossing and turning. And all he really wants is to get up on the bed like nothing ever happened, slide his arms around Sam slip down into sleep. It isn’t right, he knows it isn’t right, and he suffers for it, guilt and horror rolled up into a tight ball in his chest. He’d thought it would be like flipping a switch. He knows how to take care of his little brother, and that instinct should outweigh anything like wanting to… sleep with him. But it’s tangled up and it’s way too late and they are both _so_ fucked.

On the second day, Sam still doesn’t speak to him at all, and that bothers Dean even more than if Sam had exploded all over him. _That_ he could handle. He watches Sam and Sam watches nothing while they drive. Dean can’t bring himself to order a room with two queens the next time they stop, and he spends the night on the floor again.

On the third day, Sam speaks to Dean in terse tones, nothing more exciting than ‘pass the salt’ or ‘can we stop here?’. He pays more attention to the waitress than he does to Dean, and she smiles, wide and bright while she fills Sam’s coffee, leans in close and brushes her hand over his. Sam’s not really flirting back, but shit, he doesn’t have to, the way he smiles and the way he’s _not_ paying attention to Dean.

Dean’s the silent one on the way to the motel, hands gripping the steering wheel until they hurt. 

On the fourth night, Sam finally leans over the bed and looks down at Dean and sighs. “Why are we doing this, Dean?”

“Until we know for sure we... we _shouldn’t_.”

“But we already _did_ ,” Sam says. “And if you think there’s any way we can go back to the way things were before…” Sam shakes his head. “Dean, I wanted to jump your bones pretty much the second we met. I’m thinking that’s not gonna change.”

Dean’s uncomfortable, the floor is cold, he’s barely slept, and he’s horny as hell after months of sex on demand and then going cold turkey for four days. He can’t even jerk off without thinking of Sam, and then feeling guilty for thinking about Sam, and then feeling guilty about jerking off instead of fucking Sam.

“This has seriously got to get resolved soon,” he mutters, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

Sam seems to take that as an invitation. He slithers down off the bed, pulling a tangle of sheets with him, and presses his long, hard body alongside Dean’s. He’s naked, the fucking tease, and his dick’s cutting a line into Dean’s upper thigh. God, he’s warm, and he smells so—

“Sam,” he whispers, trying to push Sam’s mouth away from his neck, and _fuck_ he really doesn’t want to, because the things Sam can do with his tongue have got to be illegal in at least forty-nine states and Dean feels ready to do just about anything to get that tongue against his cock and this is—

“My brother. What if you’re my brother?”

“Already told you. Besides, we don’t even know for sure,” Sam says, tracing circles along Dean’s pulse line.

“I do,” Dean whispers. “Don’t you… feel it, Sam?”

Sam lifts his head and looks Dean in the eye, and Dean thinks he sees the truth there; thinks Sam feels it too, just like Dean does, deep down, on a level so instinctive it’s like reflex. “I know I feel _you_ ,” Sam whispers. “Inside and out. Like you’re home, and this is where I’m always supposed to be, where I was always supposed to be. 

Dean’s throat goes dry, and any other time, he’d crack a joke, change the subject, maybe even get annoyed, because Sam is definitely not getting with the program. But Dean’s at the end of his will, the end of his strength, and Sam’s staring at him and saying words Dean doesn’t have any defense left against.

“And if that’s what being brothers feels like, then I don’t think we were ever normal brothers to begin with.” Sam leans in, presses his mouth against Dean’s. “And if we ever were normal brothers,” he whispers, “we’re not anymore.”

Sam runs a light fingertip up the center of Dean’s dick, and it twitches, fully hard, flushed and aching, and Dean moans. “This is so many different kinds of wrong.”

“Your dick doesn’t seem to think so,” Sam says, dragging another light, barely-there stroke.

“My dick,” Dean breathes, ragged as his hips strain, twist up off floor. “Should not be trusted to make its own decisions.”

“Neither should your brain,” Sam teases.

“No kidding,” Dean says, grabs Sam by the shoulders and flips him over. He yanks his boxers down, fits their hips together and grinds home against Sam, cock to cock with a low moan, and Jesus, yes, _this_. Sam’s hands digging into his hips, urging him faster, Sam’s mouth whispering obscenities, Dean whispering worse back, dropping hot, heavy kisses down Sam’s neck while he holds Sam still underneath him, rocking and rutting until they’re both sweating, cutting grooves into each other with their nails. Sam makes a short, sharp shout as he comes, spilling hot and thick all over Dean’s belly, his cock and it’s incredibly fucking hot. He comes so hard he goes blind for a second, mouthing at Sam’s collar bone, and Jesus, he is so ruined for sex with anyone else for the rest of his life.

His brother. Jesus Christ. His little brother. It should feel so wrong. It doesn’t. It doesn’t, and somehow, that’s the worst part of all.

“This is so twisted,” Dean whispers, panting hot against Sam’s chest. Sam’s hands come down, stroke through Dean’s hair.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispers.

Dean doesn’t answer.

 

*

It doesn’t start being okay the next morning. Dean spends the day torn between wanting to beg Sam’s forgiveness and wanting to pull over the Impala and fuck Sam into the upholstery so hard he can’t think anymore, stuck in the middle dead guilty the whole time. He can’t quite get past “Sam is my brother”, can’t quite let go of “Sam is my…” well, whatever Sam was before. 

Sam asks him what’s wrong so many times that Dean finally snaps at him, and then Sam pulls his hurt puppy face and Dean feels even _guiltier_.

It doesn’t start being okay that evening, either. Dean’s more exhausted than ever, tired of turning everything over and over in his mind like a dryer full of clunky shoes. He eyes the single king in the center of the room and snatches the car keys off the dresser. 

“I’m gonna go get some food,” he says.

Sam’s face creases in a light frown. “You want me to come with you?”

“Nah. I’m just gonna run to the _Arby’s_ right down the street.”

Sam still looks vaguely worried as Dean shuts the door, and Dean feels a sudden rush of relief at being out from under Sam’s puppy eyes—immediately followed, of course, by his constant pal; guilt. He starts to open the door to the Impala then stops, decides to walk instead. He figures it’s a long shot, but maybe walking in the cool evening air will help him clear his head.

It’s maybe a quarter mile to the _Arby’s_ , and Dean’s no closer to an answer as he juggles the weight of two hot bags and two sodas while he walks, wishing he’d brought the Impala after all. He hears the crunch of gravel as someone pulls into the _Arby’s_ parking lot behind him as he crosses from the gravel into grass, orange neon light from the sign a receding glow.

Thing is, Sam’s right. Nothing’s changed. Except that Dean feels even more fiercely protective of Sam than he did, before. And that’s about _it_.

Distantly, he hears car doors slam in the parking lot. He’d been happy before this, happier than he can ever remember being. And considering his life, he guesses he’s pretty lucky he had that at all, even for a few months.

_You think you’re ever gonna be happy again without him? Without **this** between you?_

The question pops out of nowhere, catches him by surprise and stops him cold in his tracks.

 _No._ The answer to both questions is immediate, instantaneous, and he feels like maybe he’s having another one of those moments like he did that night in the woods when he found Sam, everything slowing down—

“Excuse me,” someone says politely from just behind his shoulder.

He shifts the weight of the bags and turns, still so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn’t even realize he’s in trouble until everything goes black.

*

Sam waits about twenty more minutes after he’s absolutely SURE Dean should be back, and then he pulls out his spare key to the Impala and drives up and down the length of the whole road five times. He circles the _Arby’s_ parking lot so many times the employees are starting to stare at him fearfully through the drive-thru windows. Finally, he parks and goes inside.

“Yeah, I remember,” the girl says and pops her gum. “He was cute. Came in here about an hour and a half ago.”

He walks to the roadside, finds a half-worn-in trail littered with trash and follows it with his flashlight. When he finds the two full bags of cold food and the two spilled sodas, his stomach somersaults inside him and sinks right down to his knees.

_Fuck._

*

Bobby doesn’t seem at all surprised to see Sam. Just leans his head out the door, peers around and asks, “Where’s Dean?” 

“That’s why I’m here,” Sam says, mouth drawing into a tight line. He shoves his hands into his pockets and stares Bobby down. “He’s missing.” 

Bobby invites him in—if you count opening the door a little wider with a grunt “inviting”—and walks off towards the kitchen. “What happened?” he calls, and Sam can hear the sound of bottles clinking. By the time he gets to the room, Bobby’s got two beers opened, and Sam could care less about beer, care less about anything except finding Dean. Right Now. But he wants Bobby’s help and he wants to be polite, so he takes the bottle and tips it up. 

“Thanks,” he says, after he swallows, and Bobby nods, seems to relax just a little. “We were at a motel here in South Dakota… everything was… normal, I guess. Dean went out to get food and never came back.” Bobby nods, face closed. 

“I know what you’re thinking; maybe Dean finally wised up and took off. I get it,” Sam says, and he can feel the tension in his face, hard as carved stone. “But he’d never leave his car, Bobby. You know he wouldn’t. It’s Gordon and Kubrick. Has to be. They have him.”

He watches Bobby’s face change, open a cautious fraction. “You think he’s—”

“No,” Sam says, abrupt as he cuts Bobby off. He can see the older man’s eyes flicker with mild surprise, and he looks down, mildly embarrassed. “He’s not dead. Because if he was dead, it wouldn’t make a very good trap.”

“For you,” Bobby says.

Sam nods, not quite trusting himself to speak. 

“So they took Dean to set a trap for you, and you’re gonna go charging in there like they want?” Bobby sighs. “You two both got the lion’s share of stupid, I’ll give you that. I’m startin’ to think you deserve each other.”

“That’s not all,” Sam says. He sighs sits down at the kitchen table. “Look, just…don’t shoot me, okay? Let me finish explaining, first.”

“Not promising anything,” Bobby says, sitting down across from him.

“Fine.” Sam wrestles with himself for a moment, bites his lower lip, then bites the bullet, decides to just spill it and get it all over with at once. “I’m one of those things you guys call a “psychic kid”. I get visions of the future. The whole reason I went back to Dean was because I had a vision of him dying, and I… I just couldn’t let him. I’ve been hoping that I’m gonna get a vision about him this time, something that’ll tell me where he is, what’s happening to him. But there’s just…nothing.”

Bobby’s staring at him, and Sam can hear a lone cricket chirping from the basement.

“Anything else I should know?” he finally asks.

 _Yeah. We ran into that yellow-eyed demon last week. He says we’re brothers. I figure it’s not that big a deal since we didn’t grow up together, but Dean says it’s like fucking in sin. What do you think, Bobby?_

Sam steels himself, takes a breath. “I have another power, too, but I’ve only used it twice, to defend myself. The first psychic kid I met was a woman who tried to kill me. I threw her really hard and accidentally killed her. The second time was when Kubrick attacked me at the gravesite, when Dean got hurt. I didn’t kill him, just knocked him out.” His face goes dark. “But that must have been enough to convince them that I’m more dangerous than Dean, now. They want me to give myself up.”

Bobby shakes his head. “Anything else?”

Now it’s Sam’s turn to sigh. “And I put an axe into a woman who was enslaving men with her voice, the thing Dean called a siren, she was a psychic kid, too. But that’s it for humans. And I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me or someone else.”

Bobby nods, taking it in. “You passed the holy water test,” he says, frowning. “Both times.” Off Sam’s look he motions the brown bottle. “The beer,” he says.

Sam nods. “I don’t think it’s like being possessed. The demon put his blood in me when I was baby—in all of us who have powers, I guess—but it’s like… part of us, now,” he says, shudder racing down his spine.

Bobby looks about as icked out by that thought as Sam feels. “Still,” Bobby says. “If it was evil, the holy water should burn you.”

“You think there’s a chance it isn’t?” Sam asks, hopeful.

“Can’t say for sure without knowing. But I think there’s a chance, yeah.” Bobby’s eyes go shrewd. “Which means it might be up to you in the end, which way it goes.”

They’re both silent, thinking about that for a long moment. The cricket has gone silent, too, for the moment, and all Sam can hear is the hum of the refrigerator, reverberating loudly in his ears.

“So,” Bobby says, standing abruptly. “Let’s go find Dean.”

*

It doesn’t take very long, dusty maps laid out on top of piles of books, illuminated by gas lamps. Bobby’s got a metal bowl in front of him, burning some of the nastiest spice Sam’s ever smelled. The smoke hangs, cloying, and Sam sneezes, earning him a stern look.

“This mold gets scattered, I’m sending _you_ out to scrape more of it off Baba Yaga’s traveling hut.”

Sam sneezes again, but turns his face away this time. Bobby mutters something under his breath and Sam feels a second of panic, imagining gigantic chicken claws and witches, until he realizes Bobby’s reciting something in Latin.

A moment later, an icy wind flows over Sam’s skin, touch leaving chills in it’s wake, and Sam would swear he feels something leathery flutter over his face. He reaches up his hand to brush it aside—and that’s when he sees it.

Snapshot of an image, an old stone well, mouth wide and plunging into darkness, a huge bell strung above it. There’s a design on the bell, delicate filigree that looks like the branches of a tree. A second later, the picture is gone, after-image still burned into his brain, and his eyes fly open, meet Bobby’s.

“What’d you see?”

Sam describes it, sees the recognition flash in Bobby’s eyes before he’s even finished talking.

“Cold Oak,” Bobby says, and moves to the maps.

*

“Hi, Dean,” Kubrick says as Dean opens his eyes.

Dean promptly shuts them again and groans. When Kubrick stubbornly refuses to disappear after several minutes —or even shut up— he gives in.

“Day two,” he says, and sighs, tries to sit up a little straighter in the chair he’s bound to. His mouth is hot, and his tongue feels like a dry-rotted balloon that won’t quite pop. He’s got one bitch of a headache, pain radiating from the back of his head where Gordon crowned him outside the _Arby’s_ parking lot. Being stuck with Kubrick the whole time is just adding insult to injury, and Dean considers himself a pretty laid back guy, but there’s only so many ‘Holy Crazy Sermons, Batman!’ one man should be expected to stand. It’s Gordon’s idea of torture and Dean fucking well knows it, wonders for a second if the old-fashioned kind might not be more merciful. He could lose a toenail or two, hell, even a tooth. Right now, passing out from blood and pain loss is right up there with palm trees and girls clad in nothing but hula skirts. 

“Why’d you leave us, Dean? You were part of the fold,” Kubrick says, and Dean wonders how he maintains that kind of fervor with the lack of sleep he must be running on at this point. “You were one of the chosen,” Kubrick says, like he’s mystified. Dean knows he’s just getting warmed up, too. Pretty soon it’ll be all Hellfire and damnation and praying for Dean’s immortal soul, possibly followed up by some really fun attempts at getting Dean to confess his sins and the always entertaining speaking in tongues.

“You know, Kubrick,” he rasps, sagging slightly to the side as he sizes the other man up. “Before you, I never believed God might exist.” Kubrick actually stops talking for a second, tilts his head at Dean like a curious dog. “But now… I think maybe he’s up there. And let me tell you, that guy? He’s got a wicked sense of humor.”

“You need to find God, Dean,” Kubrick says, in all seriousness.

“Well, if you find him first, punch that motherfucker for me, because he owes me.”

Kubrick sputters incoherently for a second, and for a second, Dean hopes he pissed Kubrick off so bad that he might actually knock Dean out.

Kubrick raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Forgive him, Father, for he knows not what he does.” Kubrick levels his eyes back on Dean. “That’s what Jesus said when they took his clothes, when they stripped him down and crucified him.”

Dean nods. “We can make that happen. I mean, if that’s what you want.” He thinks for a second then reconsiders. “Well, maybe not the stripping you part, but we could definitely work out the crucifixion.”

“What happened to you, Dean?” Kubrick asks, so plaintive and sad that for a second, Dean almost feels sorry for him. Almost.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Dean says, leaning forward as far as he can. “It’s not just the sodomy,” he says, waving his hands as much as he can within the bonds. “It's the incest. And seriously, how does God expect you to not sin when he withholds the info? I mean, huh? Drop a guy a clue, right?”

Kubrick works his mouth, speechless, and Dean takes a moment to bask in the enormity of the vein pulsing in the middle of Kubrick’s forehead, hopes like hell it pops.

“See? What I’m saying,” Dean says, hands as expansive as he can make them. “I’m really glad we had this talk,” he adds and nods. 

Kubrick gets up and leaves, and Dean is eternally grateful. And if God’s up there, He totally can’t complain, because Dean’s making the most of the moment, and he’s pretty sure he can work out of these bonds before Kubrick works out of his snit.

“God helps those who help themselves, right?” he mutters, twisting his wrists.

*

It’s raining. It’s raining, and Sam is totally _not_ trying to die. He knows he’s pushing the Impala to her limits, hears her squeal, feels her tires slip when he slides around a corner too fast, knows Dean would murder him in a heartbeat, true love, brother or not. 

Bobby would be yelling at him by now, telling him to slow down, asking if he was fucking retarded. But Bobby’s not here, because Sam convinced Bobby that if anything happens to him… Dean’s going to need him.

Boston surges up inside the car, singing _It’s Been Such a Long Time_ and Sam holds on to the steering wheel, careens around a curve. Windshield wipers slap, slinging water, and he pets the dashboard, tries to soothe her, pushes the gas and tries to get her to give a little more.

“Come on, baby,” he whispers. “Dean’s in trouble.”

*

The door swings open and Dean lifts his head, holds his breath. He can see that it’s Kubrick, and he manages to reserve his sigh. Kubrick’s stands there, looking at the chair, probably in awe over the emptiness—the complete anti-Deanness—of it. The door creaks on its hinges, not quite shut, and Dean pulls silently to his feet behind Kubrick, snatches the gun from the man’s holster.

Kubrick turns, completely flabbergasted, and again, Dean almost feels sorry for him. Almost.

Dean shoots him in the stomach.

Kubrick’s expression of surprise hurts him a little, and he watches the older man open his mouth to speak, watches blood trickle down from the corner of his mouth. Kubrick gurgles once and pitches forward, and Dean backs up a step.

Kubrick might have been crazier than a shithouse rat, might have deserved to die for trying to kill Sam and Dean both, but Dean can’t help feeling like killing a crazy person is a lot like killing an overgrown kid who didn’t know any better. 

“Get some rest, old man,” he whispers, kneels and closes Kubrick’s eyelids. He sits there for a moment, elbows resting on his knees and takes a breath. Takes Kubrick’s guns and adds them to his collection. He rises to his feet and reaches out with the tip of one gun, pushes the door to the house open, waits, listens.

There’s nothing; just the sound of night birds and insects, the sound of water trickling in the stream and Dean takes a deep breath.

“Dean!”

Sam’s voice plows into him like a semi and he crashes stupidly, headlong through the doorway like some kind of love struck idiot right out of a movie. The kind he always makes fun of when he sees them rushing blindly into danger.

“Sam?” he yells, spinning on the porch, trying to look both directions at once.

Sam’s there, about fifty feet away, jogging down the middle of the street. Dean leaps down the porch steps, hits the mud running, and he can see the smile spread across Sam’s face even from this distance.

“Dean!”

And that’s when Dean sees Gordon.

“Sam! Watch out!”

Frozen moments in time, Sam, running toward him, confused, still too far away. Gordon’s maniacal grin and the white’s of his eyes the only thing visible behind Sam’s shoulder in the darkness. Glint of moonbeam off a knife.

Dean’s running, feet flying over the ground, mind screaming _too late, too late_ over and over again.

“Sam. Sammy—NO!”

There is no flash bulb pop; just slow motion horror of Sam’s mouth opening in a soundless scream, blood trickling out as his spine arches and contorts.

So much time, too much time, to notice all the little details. The way the blood bubbles slow over Sam’s lips, crimson pop as it explodes. The shudder of his body as Gordon twists the knife. The way the rain trickles down his face as his eyes go wide with pain then flutter shut.

And then he’s there, catching Sam in his arms, weight of his body boneless and slack. Blur of Gordon running away into the dark, and he doesn’t care about that, doesn’t care about anything except—

“Sam?” 

He falls to his knees, takes Sam’s weight. Wraps his arms around Sam’s chest, feels for the wound—and oh, GOD. Not just blood, he can feel bone, sliding all wrong against his fingers. Discs grinding and barely holding together.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he promises, voice cracking, heart shattering as he shakes Sam, tries to believe. “Not too bad,” he swears, staring into Sam’s eyes. Hazel depths going slack and unfocused, lids sliding closed. Dazed and unaware.

He grabs Sam’s face between his hands and tries to hold him up.

“Sam. Just hang on, hang on, okay? It’s gonna be—”

Sam slides forward, spilling heavily against Dean. Rough rattle of breath into Dean’s shoulder and he knows that sound, has heard it hundred times; death rattle. Last shuddering exhale of life. And all he can think is—

_How can it be this? How can it be now?_

“No, no, no,” he whispers fervently, slides his hands around Sam’s neck, pulls him in close, kisses wet, lifeless lips. “not after all this.”

He shuts his eyes tight, leans into the curve of Sam’s neck, breathes in the smell of him. Still warm, still warm, and NO, he can’t be GONE. Dean won’t let him be gone, because without him—

“No, Sam. No. Don’t. Please.” Senseless words whispered against Sam’s mouth, and Dean pulls him in, holds him so tight he feels Sam’s spine crack and shift inside his body, and he can’t help it, then, racking sob that bubbles up, thick from his chest.

“Sammy.” Whispered denial, useless tears. Howling wind and the swirl of rain, spiraling down around a broken man, broken body of a boy still held close in his arms.

*

Later, when he looks back, he’ll realize there are a couple of hours he can’t account for; time lost to the rain, blur of mud and Sam’s cooling body in his arms. He thinks maybe he screamed at the sky, muttered prayers to a God he doesn’t believe in, but he doesn’t know. Isn’t sure of anything, in the end, except that Sam’s dead and he’s got nothing left.

* 

Alone. He’s alone again. It’s the one thing he’s never been good at.

He’s in an old, empty wooden house. Gray light filters in through the windows, falling over the place Sam lies on a dirty mattress, skin pale and purple-tinged, cold and lifeless and long gone. Dean’s still here. Still waiting for… something.

Nothing here for you, Dean. Gotta keep on moving. Some things, some people, you gotta let go.

But there, on that mattress, is the only family—the only person--Dean’s ever known that wasn’t supposed to go away. And Sammy _did_ go away, and he’d thought he’d never be right again, never _was_ right again until he got it back and didn’t even know it—

No. Part of him _did_ know. Why’d you save him that night, Dean? Why’d he fit so easily into your life?

And oh, by the way, Dean. Have you considered the fact that you’re head over heels in love with your _brother_?

Dean shudders in a breath, rubs a hand across his face. His skin feels raw, all wrong, too hot and too tight. His eyes fix on the body on the bed like tonguing at a missing tooth. Sam doesn’t look angelic like people are supposed to when they die. He doesn’t have any of the dignity he should, the ceremonial pride given to the dead laid nestled in their coffins; limbs arranged in a perfect “x” across their chests, face fleshed out by padding and chemicals, make-up too bright and almost garish, parody of life painted on their cheeks. No. Sam’s skin is fish belly pale, purple circles cut deep beneath his closed eyes, body spread flat against the bed and too still. 

Sam looks like meat. Flesh hanging on muscle and bone.

So many things he wishes he’d said. So many he wishes he’d done. A lifetime’s worth and he can’t even count, can’t even keep track of them all as they flit through the chaos of his mind. And here at the end, that’s all he wants. He just wants to talk to Sam, just one more time. Tell him all the things he’s been holding inside since he was a kid. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something.

Sam’s still got something to say to him, though.

His fingers tremble against the leather of his wallet as he tugs it free, and he finds it easily, still tucked behind the pictures of Dad and Sammy—Sam. The edges of the paper are worn smooth from all the times he clutched this note in his hand and waited for Sam to appear, refusing to read what he knew was a goodbye, never believing that Sam was really gone.

His thumb runs along the edge of the yellow paper, and his fingers find the edges, slip inside the folds and pull them back.

_Dean,_

_You told me once that because you saved my life, you were responsible for me. I saved you this time, and the truth is, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt if it weren’t for me. So it’s time for me to be the responsible one and do what I should have done a long time ago._

_I’m sorry you got dragged into this. But I won’t be sorry for the time we spent. Sometimes, it feels like I’ve always been here. If I could stay, I would. But now it’s my turn to take care of you._

_Let me do that. Someone should._

_Let me go._

_Thank you, for everything._

_Sam_

Slowly, he tries to fold the note back into its original shape, his fingers faltering, failing. 

“When I was four,” he begins, swallowing hard against the words. “When I was four, there was a fire,” he says, trying hard to keep his voice steady. “It… it started in Sammy’s nursery. Burned the house to the ground. My mom… my mom died in it. But my dad, he grabbed Sammy out of the crib… not more than six months old… he put Sammy in my arms. And he told me to get him out of the house.”

“It wasn’t a normal fire. It was a demon that did it… and we never did find it. Well, not until last week, anyway.”

“After that,” he says, voice surging higher, louder, “I took care of him. Dad was always hunting monsters, looking for the thing that killed mom… But then… when I was nine… there was another fire. I… I couldn’t get to you. I didn’t save you,” Dean says, jaw muscle going taut. “The whole motel burned, and when it was over there was nothing left.”

His chin lolls down against his chest, tears stinging like the smoke in his eyes that night.

“I thought you were dead,” he whispers, clenching his hands together, the words like acid in his throat. He shuts his eyes tight, breathes against the emotion in his chest. “I didn’t know.” 

He rises from the chair in a rush without meaning to, kicks it over before he knows what he’s doing. “My whole life,” he whispers, guttural, staring at the wall. “My whole life,” he says again, hands fisted, veins standing out and blood pounding. His eyes turn to the still body on the bed, blur once, twice, three times. “I had one job, and I screwed it up.” Fingernails cut half moons into his palms, drawing blood, and he doesn’t feel them. “I fucking blew it…” he says, bites down hard against the words. “And for that…” he shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” Ragged breath, old ache, truth like alkaline. “All my life, I’ve been so fucking sorry.”

“And now… after I find you again… see you’re still alive,” he says and clenches his jaw, tears spilling over, searing against his cheek. “You die anyway,” he says, lets out a chuff of bewildered laughter. “Trying to save _ME_.”

He shakes his head again, draws his face down against his chest. “And I’m just supposed to let you go?” He hears his voice crack, break against the words. “How am I supposed to do that, Sam?” he asks, begs. “How am I supposed to let you down _again_?”

He spins, fist moving of its own volition, and the wood of the wall is solid, like concrete against his knuckles. Crackle, burn and sting.

He clutches against the wooden archway of the door, lets his forehead fall against it. 

“Turns out… all my life, I only loved one person,” he whispers, turns his head to look at the body on the bed. His fingers grip hard against the wood, fingernails flaring pain. He pulls them away, reluctant from their place, and walks to the bedside, those fingers closing into slow fists.

“I can’t,” he says. “I won’t.” His head wants to fall but he raises it high, chin at an angle to the ceiling. “Doesn’t matter what I have to do, Sammy.” He grinds his teeth together and thinks of what that means. It’s not even a choice.

“I’m not gonna let you die again,” he promises.

*

He covers Sam with the blanket from the Impala—the one still stained with his own blood, stubborn brown color refusing to wash away—and tucks it under Sam’s chin. He’s not going far, but it still seems wrong to leave Sam like that, so Dean covers him, too old to pretend Sam’s just sleeping, no matter what his heart wants to insist.

The three minutes it takes him to traverse the narrow muddy alleys between the row of houses seems to take forever. He’s spent hours in that house, hours knowing Sam is dead, and now he can’t wait another second. 

He's always thought he knew who he was; a hunter, a killer. Demons, monsters, that's all good, all fine. He can kill them ‘til the cows come home and sleep like a baby at night. Even demons in a human body, witches wreaking revenge on other humans. He doesn't have any trouble with that. You do what you have to, to save innocent people. A thing is either good or it’s evil, and there’s not much in between. There’s always been comfort in that, in knowing his purpose; in knowing he’s right. In not having to question himself. He’s never really had to give it much thought. What's here, what's now, what works, that's what he does. It's always been so simple. 

He’s never really thought about what he _might_ do. Never considered what he might be willing to do if _had_ to. 

What he’s doing now… this isn’t even a gray area. This is a Bad Idea, with capital letters, and he sure as fuck knows it. Never make deals with demons. His dad taught him that—and hell, he’d never needed dad to teach him that, that was just plain old _sense_ right there. There's what was, what is and what will be, and you’re not supposed to try and change it, cheat the game. Nothing good ever comes of bending the rules. 

He thinks of Sam, and thinks _fuck it_. He’s done with the goddamned rules. Done with this whole goddamned bit. Without Sam none of it means anything.

He steps out from between the buildings, into the wide dirt street.

“Where are you?” he yells, sound carrying, echoing sharply off the buildings, fading with the sound of startled night birds into the sky. The street remains empty, silent, nothing moving beneath the moonlight, still and hushed as if Dean’s voice scared away even the memories of this place. He turns his feet in a circle, scanning the street, the wooden porches, the shadows between the buildings. He’s opening his mouth to yell again when he turns and finds the demon standing right in front of him.

“Told you you’d change your mind,” it says, grinning.

It takes all of Dean’s willpower not to flinch, step back.

“I heard about Sam,” it says, shakes its head. “Such a shame. I had such hopes for him. He’d have made a great second-in-command.”

“I wanna make a deal,” Dean says.

The thing looks at him hard, eyes savvy. “What kind of deal?”

Dean tries to speak, feels the words catch, crumble in his throat. “My… my soul.” The words tumble out, awkward, and he finds strength in the sound, pushes on. “My soul for Sam’s life.”

The demon looks interested, eyes glinting for a second in the moonlight, and then it shakes its head slowly. “Sorry. Can’t take it. You’re the Antichrist, Dean.”

“What?” Dean blinks. “But you have to!”

“Tell me how I’d explain that one to the man downstairs. Fruit basket with a note—‘Oops. Sorry I ruined your apocalypse.’? This ain’t a fire sale, Deano.” The demon looks him up and down. “Still. You would have given it. I respect that,” he says, tilting a finger out at Dean.

“Fine,” Dean says, sets his jaw. “Then I’ll be your indentured servant, cabana boy in Hell after the end of the world. Anything.”

“I’m surprised at you, Dean. Sell your soul? Be a slave? To the thing that killed your mom? Nobody goes that far,” the demon says, dull golden gleam of his eyes as he calculates Dean. “Not for their brother. Not even if they’re fucking him.”

Dean swallows hard, hopes his voice won’t give away what he feels in his heart, what must be written all over his face. “I do.”

Its eyes narrow, and then go wide, as if with realization. “You’re in love with him.” The yellow-eyed demon throws its head back, guffaws, and Dean feels the muscles in his shoulders tense, hands flexing, wanting to be around the thing’s throat. “Oh, I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried. It’s, poetic, even. Brother in love with broth—”

“Bring him back,” Dean snarls, shoves his face into the demon’s.

It’s still chortling, but it straightens, gets a hold of itself, and Dean thinks he sees something like regret in the thing’s face. “Love to, but I can’t,” it answers.

“Then find someone who _can_.

“Deano,” it starts to say, grinning around the slur of his name. And it doesn’t have to say anything else, Dean hears the intent. 

“I’ll be your Antichrist,” Dean promises. “Whatever you want.” His eyes narrow and he leans closer to the demon. “Just bring. Him. Back.”

The demon tilts its head, licks its lower lip and contemplates a moment. “I know someone who can. And there _is_ one other thing you can do for me.”

“Name it.”

It grins like it just won the lottery.

*

The trees edge in close around the dirt road where he’s parked, and it’s quiet, way too still. There’s a sense of foreboding here, like the entire world hesitates on the verge of taking a breath.

“It’s not quite on par with ending the world,” ol’ Yellow Eyes says with a shrug. “But it’s a good start.”

He’s got the weight of the Colt back in his right hand, solid and heavy against the curve of his palm, the Impala at his back. He thinks of Sam’s body inside, cold and curled on the oiled leather of the backseat. 

“The second you do your part,” it says, “Sammy boy here wakes up.”

He could shoot it. Shoot the thing that killed his mom and took his brother, end it all, right here, right now.

He tightens his grip on the gun and steps across the railroad track into the graveyard.

*

The muzzle of the gun fits perfectly into the mausoleum, slotting into place, key to lock. He puts his hands on the wheel, and the metal’s _warm_ , radiating heat like the mausoleum behind it is an oven.

 _Big enough to cook the whole world,_ he thinks, starts to turn it.

There’s the sharp click of a gun cocking behind him.

“Don’t do it, son.” Bobby’s voice, rough and gravelly, hard and weary all at once.

“What’re you doing here, Bobby?” Dean asks, without turning, feeling at least a thousand times older than he sounds.

“All the signs pointed here. Or rather, they didn’t. Only place on the map without an overabundance of demon activity. Too damned suspicious not to check out.”

Dean bows his head, feels tears well behind his eyes and swallows them back. He’s spent the last thirty-two hours with no sleep and he’s damned tired, bone tired.

“I have to do this, Bobby.” And damn it, he doesn’t want it to go down like this. Not with Bobby. “It’s the only way I can get him back,” Dean pleads.

“You know where that door leads?”

He sighs, nods. “I know.”

“Then how can you even _think_ \--“

“Because he’s my brother,” Dean says, and turns the wheel.

A gun shot rings out in the air, pure crystalline sound suspended alone for a split second in time—and then the door flies open, black smoke exploding outward with concussive force, thousands of voices screaming all at once.

  
  



	5. Seasons of Man

**Seasons of Man**

Then according to the man who showed his outstretched arm to space,  
He turned around and pointed, revealing all the human race.  
I shook my head and smiled a whisper, knowing all about the place.  
On the hill we viewed the silence of the valley,  
Called to witness cycles only of the past.  
And we reach all this with movements in between the said remark. 

Close to the edge, down by the river.  
Down at the end, round by the corner.  
Seasons will pass you by,  
Now that it's all over and done,  
Called to the seed, right to the sun.  
Now that you find, now that you're whole.  
Seasons will pass you by,  
I get up, I get down. 

~Close to the Edge IV, Seasons of Man, by Yes 

 

The shot goes wide—or Bobby misses him on purpose—and then there’s no time for anything else. The demons part like water, screaming around Dean and Dean barely even notices. Demons, destruction, the beginning of the end, that’s a given, it’s old news, and there’s only one thing left Dean gives a damn about.

He turns to look, demons swirling like a tornado all around, eyes seeking around their smoking forms, picking between the gravestones, to the grass and trees beyond. There are people everywhere; Bobby, Yellow Eyes, others he doesn’t know or recognize, but there’s only one he wants to see.

 _Sam_.

He’s far away, at the furthest edge of the graveyard, but he’s alive, tall and breathing and the best sight for sore eyes _ever_. The second Dean sees him, he feels his whole body relax, feels his heart start to beat again. And he knows he lied when he told Bobby he was opening the gate because Sam’s his brother. Brother was the easy answer, and the only one Bobby might’ve understood. Standing here, watching Sam run across the grass, shotgun in one hand, gun in the other like Dean taught him, Dean feels something rise up inside him, something so big and tangled in so many emotions he doesn’t even know what to call it. Lover, brother, partner, and some things Dean doesn’t have words for. He just knows it’s everything.

The ground rumbles, roar rising up out of the hole in reality behind him. He feels it coming, hairs on the back of his neck standing up to dance, the way they do just before a really bad storm.

Something heavy hits him in the back, slams into him so hard that his teeth rattle—and then—

It explodes from him with the force of a supernova; colorless, invisible momentum that slams into everyone around him and sends them reeling. Bodies hit the ground, thrown flat by the blast, form a strange pattern of debris from Dean’s body outward.

Waves of pulsing energy pour from Dean, radiating so strong he can almost _see_ them. It plows through him like wildfire, breaking down locked doors in his mind with the force of a hurricane. There’s a sense of weightlessness, intoxicating like a drug, pure freedom, guilt shoved aside, and from the cellars of his mind something creeps, something dark and unfamiliar yet completely part of him. 

It’s greedy, hungry, eager. Like an oil slick, it slides inside him, rises up and covers his mind, coats his insides until he can’t feel anything anymore. 

_The demon was right_ he thinks, just before it consumes him completely.

_It was me all along._

*

Sam slams into the ground so hard that he sees stars for a second, Glock cutting into his side with sharp pain. He digs his fingers into the soft dirt, holds on tight while the wind screams around him, the force of it pulling his fingers from the earth, forcing him backwards across the ground.

He isn’t sure how he got here, doesn’t know what the _fuck_ is going on, except that it’s huge on a level he’s never imagined. He thinks maybe he died, is pretty sure whatever’s happening now is a result of him being alive again, and he doesn’t know all the details, and he doesn’t really care. He just knows it’s Dean at the epicenter, and that all he needs is Sam.

When the wave passes and the roar dies down, he shoves to his feet, staggers through the gravestones, gun still in each hand. He doesn’t know, for the life of him, what fucking good _any_ guns are gonna do him in _this_ situation, but they feel good, comforting in the palms of his hands, and he wonders when that happened? When everything changed and this became a way of life.

Something in him rises up, firm and stern and sure, answers. _Because this is the way it was always supposed to be._

And then Bobby’s there, solid and real at his side, and Sam doesn’t question that, either. Doesn’t have the time, and _of course_ Bobby would be here. Where the Hell else would he be when Dean’s in trouble?

“Help me,” Bobby yells, voice rising above the shrieking wind. “We have to get the door shut.”

Sam doesn’t care about the door, doesn’t give a good goddamn about the door. “Dean needs me!” he shouts, starting off in Dean’s direction.

Bobby grabs him by flapping edges of his jacket, pulls Sam in front of him, and for all Sam’s strength, for all his height and youth, Bobby’s grip is like iron, lifetime of strength and will.

“That’s the mouth to Hell, boy,” Bobby says, staring him straight in the eye. “You understand me?”

Sam stares, can’t think beyond the voice screaming Dean’s name in the back of his mind.

Bobby rolls his eyes. “All those demons get out, it’s gonna mean the end of the world,” he says, voice taut, simplistic and slow, as if Sam might be stupid. “End of the world, end of you, of me _and_ Dean. You get me?”

Sam nods, feeling as slow and stupid as Bobby’s treating him. “No more Dean.”

“You boys really need a new theme,” Bobby sighs, exasperated.

They run for the door, shielding their faces from the howling wind, stronger and stronger as they draw closer. It’s hot, burning hot, searing like the sun over asphalt in the worst of summer, and Sam feels himself burst into full on sweat. Hot wind pours over him, nearly scalding where it touches, and it’s thick, heavy with water, wet like a tongue as it scours him, seeks out every nook, every cranny. It feels alien, invasive, _alive_ , and Sam wants to brush it away from his skin, scrape the clinging feeling from him.

“Door,” Bobby says, suddenly there again, shoving Sam forward.

They get their hands around the metal, so hot it burns Sam, and they both pause, slide their hands inside their sleeves and get a grip on it again, pushing and shoving with all their might.

“Come… on,” Bobby grunts. “Put your ass into it, boy.”

Sam coils the muscles in his upper thighs, leans back on his calves and shoves for all he’s worth.

The door creaks slow, giving by inches, until finally they wrest it shut. The Colt sits there at the center, like a prize at the end of a marathon, and Sam plucks it from its resting place, fingers wrapping around the smooth, ivory handle.

“Now,” Bobby says, panting hard between words. “Go save him.”

*

Demons swirl in a whirlpool around Dean, slip and shift and glide, howling like banshees and they rub around him like cats begging to be petted, not quite daring to touch him. He looks at them and understands that they’re waiting for him, for his command.

Then words of a ritual that was old even in Lucifer’s time come to him, like ink absorbed and imprinting letters in his brain, so vivid-bright he can see them, read them if he closes his eyes. But he doesn’t have to read them; he opens his mouth and they spill out like fire, dancing on the air and twisting with the wind, rising in a spiral high up through the night. Demons shriek and thrash, threading together, in and out like phantoms, and the sky crackles and splits with lightning.

This is his gift. His birthright. It’s like breathing, like flying.

“Dean!”

He knows that name, that voice. His mind serves up a memory of a face and he pushes it away. It’s not important. Nothing else is more important than this. He lifts his hands, begins to chant again.

He halts as he realizes, laughs, harsh sound echoing and tearing through the neat web of words spewing from him, shredding their gossamer thin lines of power, and yes, he can _see_ them now—slender golden threads shredded by the sound. Millions and millions of threads, everywhere, running through everything, every color and hue of the rainbow and he can’t believe he never knew it was this simple, everything so easily within his grasp. He reaches out his hand, catches the purple-black threads of a demon swirling by, and tugs. He laughs as it unravels, spinning out like a cyclone before it evaporates, strands of it still clinging to his fingers before they vanish, too.

Gone. Unmade in an instant. He stares at his fingers. They’re made purely of red, layers and layers of it, darkening as it reaches closer to bone. These fingers can unmake a demon with a simple pull as if it had never existed. The fabric of reality is his, a tapestry just waiting, his to weave and touch and change. 

He doesn’t need the words. He is a God.

Images slip and slide through his fingers, floating away on moments and minutes, everything distilled down into simple seconds and fragments of possibility. Snapshots fly by, things that have happened and things that never have and some that never will, each weaving its own complete tapestry in a fraction of an instant, worlds stretching out with infinite beginnings and endings and all the time in between. 

His fingers skim the surface of all that passes him by, dipping fingers into shades of reality he’s never tasted. Sound and color and texture wash over him, filling his mind with the individual song of each world, each one sung brightly in its own unique voice. None like another, and yet they all merge together as a whole; individual tapestries side by side, defining the universe and everything within it, connected loosely, tenuously, but all cut from the same fabric.

All he has to do is _pull_.

*

Sam moves like Bobby’s words release him from a spell, or maybe send him back into one, because he can’t think of anything else, Dean’s name singing out from the bottom of his mind and filling him.

Dean. Sam’s close now, can see him, standing there, clad in ordinary jeans and a t-shirt, jean jacket and motorcycle boots. But there’s nothing ordinary about him. Never has been. And in this moment, he’s more extraordinary than he’s ever been. Hair tossed wild and pulled by the wind, t-shirt rippling up over the flat plane of his tanned stomach, hands out from his sides, held like a gunslinger about to draw and feet planted wide apart, full mouth sealed in a straight, determined line. He glows, a creature of brilliant light and shifting rainbow hues. And his eyes… his _eyes_.

Sam stumbles, swallows hard. Takes the final steps that bring him within Dean’s reach like a man in a dream. He’s close, so close now, and he can see everything. Dean’s eyes…they aren’t black, or red or yellow.

Universes spin within Dean’s eyes, stars and suns that sparkle like diamonds.

And all Sam can think is that he’s more beautiful than anything else Sam has ever seen.

*

“Dean.”

Sam. Dean hones his focus, brings it to this moment, this place. Sam is a shimmering network of gold and blue threads, energy coursing through him like tiny electrical charges, racing through his mind and pulsing around his heart. 

“Are you going to try to stop me?” Dean asks, and his voice sounds thick, heavy and dark as iron. It’s not an entirely human sound as it bubbles up through his chest, and he can see Sam’s heart pulse bright as the sound hits him.

Sam’s fingers tighten on the gun in his hands—twisted cords of black and gray—and Dean can see that it’s not the Colt. Just the Glock. His face is shaped with illuminated lines of electric blue, and Dean can see his expression, the surface of his skin. Sam’s mouth twists in a hard coil, and he shakes his head.

“No,” he says and takes a step forward. “If you gotta end the world? I’m coming with you.”

Dean offers his hand and Sam takes it, pulls in close.

“Don’t you want to save it?” Dean asks, except the words don’t leave his mouth, they sing through the air and pierce Sam’s mind directly, little shot of crimson disappearing inside cerulean. Sam flinches, but Dean can see his resolve, see straight down through his soul to his core, rock-steady and sure. 

“Not if you’re not gonna be in it,” Sam answers. He presses his mouth to Dean’s for a brief instant, and Dean can feel the rhythm of his energy, life force coursing through him, suffusing and blending with Dean’s own. He can feel the places where they touch beginning to merge, beginning to meld.

“Dean?” Sam asks, as he pulls back, stands straight. Fear laced through his voice, and Sam raises his hands, suddenly uncertain. Dean watches as Sam’s face flickers between Dean’s features and his own, and Dean lifts his hands, mirror image of Sam. The thing inside his mind shrieks, echoes of pain spiking through him—and then it fades, gone in a flash of light as their hands pass through each other, drawing them inexorably together even as they struggle to pull away. Dean can see the neurons firing, sparks of electricity racing madly as they join as one. 

They are one. And they are not alone.

Light flashes again, and this time, it reveals not Dean’s features, and not Sam's, but their mother's; beautiful face filled with serenity and light, wisdom and love. Beyond her, a dark, ominous presence that rises tall and deadly, destruction looming, death-seeking, yellow eyes glaring inhuman hatred. In an instant, Dean recognizes the truth. This is part of both of them; IT is part of both of them. The same blood flows in their veins, mother and father and demon, he knows it with complete certainty now.

The image flashes, fades, and they are on their own again, still joined, two bodies made one, two halves made whole, yet somehow they are still two. He feels the _rightness_ of it, two minds joined together neatly, perfectly, without dissonance. He is in Sam and Sam is in him and he _is_ Sam, looking at Dean through human eyes, barest impression of the weave visible around the edges, flashing in and out of reality, beyond Sam’s comprehension. But Dean can see himself clearly enough through Sam’s eyes; creation and death swirl in his veins and universes spin in his eyes, body composed of nebulas and stars, entire galaxies, suns and moons, hair made of comets and cosmic dust. Color pulses and sings through him, scintillating rainbows almost like skin, rippling and disappearing. Dean’s awareness shifts and Sam’s features push through Dean’s, and Dean is pulled into his own awareness as if through the eye of a needle, Sam following after, loop and whirl, blending, deeper and deeper until they fuse together as a final, single entity, thinking and speaking with one voice.

Light crawls over His body, arcing out all around with delicate, almost beautiful fingers, and everywhere it touches, reality opens. Walls break down to reveal the stark beauty of alien landscapes, and within, creatures of all kinds turn their strange eyes to Him. One pull, a single pull, and the universe changes, parts like a thin veil, a curtain drawn back to reveal the enormity and beauty of a thousand worlds. Skies of blue and orange melt and run together over ancient domes and futuristic spires, fields of green laid out beneath Him, filled with flowers whose color He has never seen, oceans of red glittering beneath the light of a thousand suns. He swirls among them, caught upon the edges of uncountable universes, the single cord that holds them all together, and He is in this moment a creature solely of creation.

Light flashes one last time, terrible rending as their awarenesses divide, and they fly apart, back into their own bodies, two faces staring in open-mouthed shock at each other, hands still outstretched.

“What… what was…?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” Dean says, lifts his fingers and looks at them. His hands are purple now, faintly red beneath, and he feels different. The thing inside him is silent, dormant again. The consciousness of the world, the universes around him, it’s all still there. It doesn’t look the same as it did to him before; he sees it differently now. It is not a plaything to be pulled apart and remade. It is a network of life, a single organism, everything connected, and it’s beautiful, breathtaking. This awareness… he knows it’s not all his. It’s too complex, too intricate. It’s the awareness of millions, of billions of minds. His mind feels aching, full, filled with knowledge he shouldn’t possess.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam says, resolute. He turns, stands beside Dean, shoulder just touching his. Dean doesn’t have to look again to see the implicit promise there, he feels it. Like he feels the sun rising in China, the death of a single blade of grass on the plains of the steppes, the birth of several hundred children all at once while a thousand flowers open their faces to the morning sun. He can feel the liquid, molten core of the earth, the grit and age of the layers of rock above it, the way it spins and sings on its axis. It’s everything. The whole world laid open before him and Sam at his side and he is unstoppable. 

Unstoppable. He could stop the world from spinning, boil the oceans and crack the skies. He can do whatever he wants. 

Whatever he wants.

He hesitates. Looks to the loom.

There, along one shimmering thread, destiny plays itself out just as it was meant to. Knotted in a tangled skein to a confusion of events, the most vibrant, the most likely of outcomes… but there are others. None as brilliant as this one; some barely possessing mass at all, thin, almost invisible strings that pulse and twist into nothingness, their ends unattached, not yet certain, not yet clear.

Possibilities spread out from the knot like the gossamer of a spider’s web, each one springing from one decision, a single moment in time…

There…

He traces the line back along its length, silken threads merging into a nexus of possibility around a single, pulsing cord. Thousands of possibilities, and this one brightest of all. Why? Each of them is perfect, complete, as they were meant to be. They are all equal in their right to exist, none any more, any less. 

Not one…

There…

The single, bright cord is _two_ threads, twined so tightly around each other they look like one. The change is small—the events separated by a few degrees of action.

“You won the crown,” Yellow Eyes says, walking up to them, looking at him like he can read Dean’s mind. “What are you going to do now?” 

Dean cocks his head, considers. Feeling the earth turn, feeling Sam’s love beside him, he can only think of one other thing he’s ever wanted.

“I’m going to Disneyland,” Dean says.

He flexes his mental fingers, reaches for the knot, and pulls.

The demons scream and surge, swirling in a tide of frenzy as he reaches for them. Smoky tails slinging vapor, thrashing like fish as he calls them in, touches his fingers to the lines of their forms, their power. He stretches his fingers wide, flexes his palm and they scatter, knots fraying, threads disintegrating, one huge howl of anguish that reaches into the night sky like an explosion before it dissolves into dust. Black smoke dissipates, evaporates with sudden finality, and when it clears, Dean’s staring straight into those wide yellow eyes.

“Do you know what you just did?” it asks, like it can’t quite believe it.

“The same thing I’m about to do to you,” Dean says.

“Never trust a half-blood to do a demon’s job,” it mutters with a shake of its head.

“Saved the best for last,” Dean adds, and reaches his palm out toward Yellow Eyes.

The demon explodes, vomiting out of the human body’s mouth like a rocket. Before Dean can blink he feels it slam into him, invade his mouth and fill his nose, choking him—

*

It happens so fast Sam barely has time to do anything except turn around.

“Dean!”

“Not anymore,” Dean answers, eyes glowing sickly yellow.

The gravestones all around them pull from the ground with a sucking sound, mud clinging for an instant before they tug free and fly into the air. Slabs of stone slowly pull in one direction and then begin to circle them, slow cycle speeding up until they’re moving so fast they’re like a solid wall, until Sam can’t see anything beyond them. Strands of hair fly into his face, striking and stinging his cheeks, his eyes, until he can barely see.

Slowly, the roaring sound recedes, pulls back and away and Sam can only imagine it must be the demon’s doing.

“You should see it, Sammy,” the demon sighs with relish. “All the power, the universe at my fingertips. I’ve waited a long time for this.”

“I thought this was Lucifer’s big day?”

The demon laughs. “What can I say? I never could resist stealing somebody else’s thunder. Besides, if it wasn’t for me, this whole thing might never have happened.” It pauses, looks at Sam for a moment and then smiles, sly. “Well, you and me.”

“So I _am_ the Antichrist?” Sam asks, confused.

“No. You’re just the lieutenant. Couldn’t have picked a better one, either. You done good, Sammy.”

“But… but I didn’t…”

“If you hadn’t gone running into that trap and gotten yourself killed, Dean never would’ve come to me, never would have opened the gate. Ah, Sammy, it’s poetic. If Dean hadn’t opened the gate, this whole Antichrist thing would’ve been a wash.”

It’s starting to hit him. He can feel the understanding worming around in the back of his brain, too big, too much to handle all at once. He doesn’t _want_ to know, but he can’t help it, has to ask.

“You—you mean…?”

“I mean,” it says, grinning wolfishly, “thanks to you, Dean’s the real deal now. Opening the gate unlocked his power.” 

“No,” he breathes, shakes his head. “It doesn’t make sense. If you knew Dean was supposed to be the one to open it… why take the Colt?”

“Dean has the one thing that can open the Hellgate… and none of the big bads ever try to take it from him? I think even Dean might’ve figured that one out.” It shrugs. “Plus, it was fun. Finding out you two were fucking, that was just a bonus. I made it impossible for him to kill you, figured eventually he’d end up protecting you. But I never expected him to turn lovesick puppy dog. That was all him. Oh, the love he’s got for you, Sammy, you should feel it; lover, brother, all twisted up with guilt and need. It’s tragic. No wonder he came to me and begged me to bring you back.”

Guilt like a tidal wave, crushing him under the fall, and he can’t think, can’t speak, can’t breathe.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” it says.

“This is all my fault?”

“Aw, Sam, cheer up. It’s only the end of the world,” it grins.

“There’s one thing you didn’t think about,” Sam says, throat burning with the words, his eyes blurring as he blinks. His fingers slide to the small of his back and wrap around smooth ivory, pull it free. “I’ve still got the Colt,” he says.

“Oh, Sam,” the demon laughs, sound nearly blending into the roaring circle of spinning stones. “You can’t _shoot_ me. I’m in Dean’s body. Go ahead,” it taunts, spreading its arms wide. “Try.”

Sam tightens his fingers on the trigger, stares down the barrel and wills the sickness in his heart away—knows he has to do this, that Dean would want him to do this, and he can’t think anything more than that, can’t think beyond that. Sweat beads on his brow and tears slip down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Dean,” he says as he pulls the trigger.

He flinches, closes his eyes, but the sound of the gun firing never comes. His finger lies still against the trigger, brain sending all the right commands to pull it.

“It’s the thought that counts,” the demon says, mock-consolation in its voice. 

All of the sudden, its face—Dean’s face—changes, stiffens and goes taut with horror, yellow eyes wide. “No!”

And then the yellow flees Dean’s eyes, draining like liquid, gone in a split second, and Dean’s clear green eyes stare at him and smile.

“Bye, Sammy.”

The gun pulls from Sam’s hands and flies into the air, spins on its handle like an axis and turns the muzzle toward Dean’s face before Sam has a chance to breathe.

“Dean, no!” he yells, lunges—

The Colt fires, tiny, perfect hole in the center of Dean’s forehead, right between those triumphant eyes.

“No!” he screams.

Flash bulb pop, lightning under Dean’s skin, illuminating bone, and Sam’s stomach turns over. The Colt clatters to the ground and Dean crumples. Gravestones go flying in every direction and Sam hits the ground, covers his head. Tries to crawl to Dean, crying so hard he can barely see. A gravestone goes winging over his head, nearly grazing him, and he forces himself to wait, seconds feeling like eternity. Stone shatters all around him and when the air finally clears, Sam’s on his feet.

Dean’s lying in the center of the smoking ruins of gravestones, pale, motionless, trickle of blood from his forehead so dark it looks black as it trails from the wound. He looks almost peaceful, satisfied, small smile curving his lips.

“Oh, God. Dean.”

There’s a sound behind him, a rustle of grass that makes him turn—and it’s all that saves his life as Gordon’s blade goes rushing past his cheek. He brings his fist up and around on pure instinct, catches Gordon in a glancing blow across his ear.

This is it, Sam knows. Rubble of graveyard stones around them, circling like an arena, and this is a fight to the death.

They back away, eyeing each other like preying animals. Foot crossing over foot, whispering over the dirt as the two move in a slow circle, gauging each other, sizing each other up; each waiting for the other to make the first move.

Gordon moves so fast Sam almost can’t track him, doesn’t even know where he is until a fist collides with his jaw with shattering impact.

Sam’s head plows painfully into the dirt, blood trailing across it like a brush stroke as he slides. Grains bury themselves in the taut lines of Sam’s face, slipping into his mouth and crunching between clenched teeth. He spins over onto his back, kicks up and out with both feet, sends Gordon flying away from him. He follows the force of the kick, pushes up and regains his feet. The world flashes red, and the tissue of his jaw feels wrong, left side hanging twisted.

But there isn’t time to worry about that; isn’t time to worry about anything.

Gordon comes at him again, fist aimed for another strike at Sam’s throbbing jaw, and Sam reaches out with both hands, grabs Gordon’s arm and goes in close, twists it until Gordon screams and jerks away. 

Gordon doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even spare a glance at his dangling, useless arm. Gordon’s already coming at him again, and Sam lunges forward with his fist, aiming for Gordon’s face.

Gordon ducks the punch easily, shifts momentum in mid-motion, throws all his weight into Sam and they go tumbling, hit the ground with a hard thump. Gordon lands on top of him, his face inches from Sam, and Sam can smell his breath as he speaks.

“I don’t know how he brought you back… but I killed you once. I can do it again.” Gordon grunts, shoves his good hand around Sam’s throat. “I spent all that time, thinking _you_ were the Antichrist, but I had the Antichrist with me, in my hands, almost the whole time. Joke’s on me, right?” he asks, with a gruff, humorless laugh. “But you…” his eyes narrow, and Sam can see the tiny red veins laced through them. “You’re something else. Something almost as bad.”

Sam grabs at Gordon’s hand, feels the world start to slide, go gray, tinged with black, red spots dancing in front of his eyes.

“Nobody’s coming to save you this time,” Gordon breathes, almost directly into Sam’s mouth. “Dean’s dead, Sam.”

_Dean’s dead._

The words echo down the corridors of Sam’s mind and he goes still as the truth strikes him, pierces his heart.

_There’s a saying. Goes ‘you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for it’. You ever heard that?_

_I saved someone’s life once. And I didn’t… I didn’t keep my end. Didn’t do my job._

The world falls further away, behind a veil of cloudy gray sliding into black. His throat burns, and his lungs ache, and he’s tired, so tired.

In his mind’s-eye he can see Dean, lying in the center of shattered tombstones, hole in the center of his forehead, smile on his pale lips like grace, like vindication.

_I finally did it, Sam. I held up my end._

Sam makes a strangled noise deep in his throat, primal scream of rage rising up, builds from his stomach to his mouth. He feels something surge from deep inside him, something breaking free of rusty hinges and scattered dust, flexing and filling him, iron-hard and unyielding.

Sam doesn’t even think about it—power explodes from him, catches Gordon’s head in an invisible fist, tears him from Sam’s body and sends him hurtling up into the air. It’s easy, God, so easy, and if he’d only known, all this time, how easy it could be—

Sam gets his arms under him, rises and plants his feet, stares up at the man hovering above him.

“Go ahead, Sam. Kill me,” Gordon says, smooth as silk. He’s dignified, composed, even hanging ten feet in the air with his arms and legs splayed wide. Gordon shakes his head, squints hard at Sam. “That’s what evil things do, right?” 

“I’m not evil,” Sam says, voice rasping. He drops Gordon to the ground, watches as the other man rises to his feet, feral grin on his lips, knife back in his hand.

“Your mistake,” Gordon says, and leaps.

It’s easy. So fucking easy. Long seconds while he waits for Gordon to reach him, and then he reaches up, reaches out and grabs Gordon’s wrists in his hands, falls and pulls, rolls with the other man to the ground, violent, brutal turn through the dirt, and then Sam yanks Gordon back up onto his feet, stares straight into those crazy eyes.

He twists Gordon’s wrist around, their hands shaking, locked together. “I’m not evil, Gordon,” Sam says with a tremulous breath. He turns his hand and the point of the blade grazes Gordon’s throat. Gordon’s eyes go wide with sudden understanding, and Sam smiles, brittle and mirthless. 

“But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill you.”

He jerks the knife, jagged cut, seething red across the jugular. Gordon twitches in his grasp, and he turns his face away, catches a spray of blood across his cheek, spattering hot against the corner of his eye. He turns his face back, watches the light fade from Gordon’s eyes, watches his mouth move and try to form words, painting his lips with ideograms of blood. He watches, waits until it’s done, until Gordon goes slack in his grasp. And then he remembers.

_Dean_

He lets the dead body drop to the ground, drops the knife and wipes the blood from his hands, sinking it deep into the thighs of his jeans. He takes a deep, shuddering breath in the stillness of an early summer’s night, and steels himself. Closes his eyes and exhales in time with the crickets in the distance, and then he turns.

He feels his knees go weak, his heart skip a beat and then go on thundering. He covers his mouth with both hands, takes a step backward in disbelief, nearly stumbles and falls.

“Dean?” he whispers, barely enough strength to push out the word.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He’s standing on his feet, whole and alive, not a mark on him, not even a scar on his forehead. 

“How?” Sam breathes.

Dean’s eyes are the same shade of green, but they’re clouded now, filled with secrets Sam doesn’t understand.

“I thought I could choose,” Dean says, shakes his head slow. “Thought I could change it all. But I can’t.” He meets Sam’s gaze full on. “There’s a reason they call it destiny,” he says, bitter. “The demon’s dead… and I still… still have to…”

“I… I have to do it,” he says, like the words hurt him. “If I don’t do it of my own free will, the thing inside me will do it. Wherever this power comes from, whatever Pandora’s box it opened in me… I can feel it growing Sam, swallowing pieces of me. Pretty soon, there won’t be much of me left. And if I let that thing do it…” he hesitates so long Sam isn’t sure he’s going to speak again. “It’ll be so much worse,” he finally says, looks away.

“Dean…” Sam says, takes a step closer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t care. Whatever it is, whatever you have to do, we do it together.”

“The job’s not done,” Dean answers with simple finality. He bites down on the inside of his jaw, holds out his hand, and Sam can see his eyes are filled with stars again. “C’mere, Sammy.”

Sam goes without question, and Dean folds him up in his arms, pulls him in close. He can feel Dean breathe, feel his heart pound, feel the ripple of his muscles beneath the skin, and he smells like Dean. Like _home_.

“Hold on to me,” Dean whispers, and then he tilts his head up, mouth closing over Sam’s. Sam kisses him, feels Dean’s face go hot and wet, and that’s not right, Dean shouldn’t be crying, not now, not now when they’ve got it all back.

From all around them comes the thick tear of something ripped open, torn asunder.

“Sammy,” Dean whispers, and it’s the last thing Sam hears.

 

*

 

“Hold on to me,” he whispers, then tilts his head up, kisses Sam’s mouth. He knows he shouldn’t, knows it’s wrong, sick, fucked up and twisted. But it doesn’t matter now. 

He’d thought he’d found the secret, found the way to change it. He’d thought dying might stop everything from ending, but when he’d woken up, whole and alive again, he’d known. Understood. You don’t get to cheat destiny, not even when you’re a God. It’s all exactly the same as before he died; shimmering lines of power connecting everything, worlds and threads and possibilities struck and spun, and he still has to end it all.

The weave melts around him like butter at his barest thought, warping and pulling free of the universal loom. Threads of reality drip from his body, and he is caught in them like a butterfly in mid-transformation, wrapped in a shimmering chrysalis. 

The future and past of entire universes thunder through his mind in a parade of overwhelming images, assault him with millions of minds and memories that are not his own. Dirty, distant streets and the cries of suffering and hunger, rage and senseless death, so many he can hardly hear them all. They merge into one great voice of longing and need, and the power within him rises up to answer. A sweep of his hand and they will all be wiped out. He can end this.

Millions of lives tremble on the verge, demon and human alike caught in the balance between his will and his destiny, and he feels them inside. He knows each one of them intimately; their hopes, their dreams, their fears, and each one of them is him. No less, no more. 

And here, at the end, it all falls away. The illusions, the delusions and avoidances, all the calluses worn across his soul, can’t stand in the face of this. He knows, in that second, that he’d offer his own life up for all of it—for each and every one of them—go Christ-like into death, and happily. Give it all up and leave Sam behind if it meant they would all live, that Sam would go on. He’s ready, he’s always been ready, been ready his whole life to lift his arms and sacrifice himself.

He’s never had a choice in any of it. Not this life of the hunting, not in following his dad, not in being what he’s become. The only thing he’s ever chosen is Sam, and he wouldn’t even have that if Sam hadn’t been taken from him. The demon was right; if Sam hadn’t been taken away, Dean would have made him the most important thing without ever questioning it. But Dean made that choice, chose Sam for himself. 

He has to make this choice, too. He doesn’t want to. But better him than the thing inside him.

The world unspools, threads and beams of power snapping beneath the twist of his hands, and as the people scream, a billion voices as one, he feels his cheeks go wet with tears. He feels them go, feels their screams cut off, their songs end, unmade and undone, and _he_ has done this. It hurts; their absence is a ragged, empty hole torn in his heart, and he wants to quit. Wants to lay down and let it all go.

He wraps his hands around the remaining threads, all that’s left, all that holds him and Sam together. It was quick before, so fast he hardly had time to think about it, and it was only him. He doesn’t feel ready to do _this_. He isn’t ready to die, isn’t ready to take Sam with him. He takes a breath and tucks his head under Sam’s chin, closes his eyes and squeezes them tight. 

_Whatever it is, whatever you have to do, we do it together._

_Inside the arena, there stood two doors, side by side, exactly alike in every way._

Steady thump of Sam’s heart against his, the warmth of his arms around Dean, solid and strong. Flash of a memory of a young boy crouched in a wheat field, little brother beside him, so young, so small, holds his breath and tastes ozone as lightning cuts viciously through the sky, caught unprepared by the storm praying it will pass them by. He breathes in deep, scent of Sam filling him, taste of Sam on his lips, memories held close as the man in his arms—and then he snaps his fist shut. Instantly the last fragments of light that hang in the air are pulled inward. Color swirls and sings for a moment, faster and faster—

“Sammy,” Dean whispers. There is a crack like the world rending itself apart, and the remainder of reality explodes in brilliance.

*

Stars fall, flicker and fade in weeping torrents, constellations unravel and fade. Planets collapse like folded origami, suns sputter and die. All of them undone in an instant, pulled toward a single point like a black hole. 

The remainder fades, dissolves, slowly receding, omniverse called back to the void where it was created, and there is nothing but stillness here. In the end, so as it was in the beginning. Alpha to omega.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then, into this darkness, a light.

 

 

 

*

The first thing he’s aware of is darkness, and then everything slowly brightens, and he can feel his legs, his arms, blood rushing through his veins. Something shifts, something warm and solid in his arms.

Dean’s eyes flicker open, blink against the rising sun.

“We’re here?” he asks, looking up at Sam.

Sam looks down at him, blinking and looking just as surprised as Dean feels. “Looks like.”

Dean looks around, and everything looks just like it did before… mausoleum, grass, gravestones and debris everywhere, people standing around blinking like they’ve just woken up from a dream. Everything looks exactly the way it did, before, except… there’s no more weave, no more awareness. Just flat stone and humans and green grass. He’s alone in his head, just Dean again. No dark thing inside him, eating up his mind, no threads or impossible decisions. Whatever the thing was that woke up in him, it’s gone.

It’s gone, and Sam’s here.

“Dude… we’re alive.” Dean hugs him hard, looks at Sam and laughs. 

“Yeah,” Sam smiles, looks like he’s really thinking about it, tilts his head to the side and looks around. “We still ending the world?” Sam asks.

“Nope,” Dean answers with a grin. Sam’s alive, he’s alive, the whole _world_ is still here. He feels giddy, almost drunk with it.

Sam bumps his shoulder into Dean’s, smirks. “Figures. Soon as I get with your program you go and change.” 

“Can’t let you catch up,” Dean says and winks. “Gotta keep you on your toes, Sammy. Besides,” he shrugs, “I did that already.” He’s feeling about like it’s Miller time—or _something_ time, anyway—and of course, that’s right when Sam goes serious on him. Suddenly there’s no space between them, and Dean looks up, can’t look away.

“God…” Sam marvels, settling his palms against Dean’s cheeks. “You’re alive.” The look in Sam’s eyes makes him want to squirm, it’s so much, and he wonders if Sam’s the kind of guy who even needs to say the word _love_ when he says it so much, all the time, in everything he does. “I thought I lost you,” he says, and there’s a sadness in him that strikes Dean deep, puts him back in that room with Sam’s dead body.

“Yeah,” Dean says, voice gruff. “I thought I lost you, too.”

“Dean… what you did for me…” Sam shakes his head, and Dean can feel the warmth of his breath. “That was…”

“Pretty amazing, yeah?” Dean says, grins. “You owe me. Like, forever.”

“Yeah,” Sam chuckles. Then his face goes somber, his eyes deep and dark as they fall from Dean’s, like he’s too embarrassed to keep looking. “But I… When the demon was in you… I would have shot you,” he says, guilty and condemning.

“I know,” Dean says, quiet with understanding. “Sam. It would’ve been the right thing to do.”

Sam’s eyes fly up to him again, looking desperate. “But when I thought you were dead… God, Dean. I...”

Dean swallows hard, puts his hand on Sam’s arm, and God, he’s really gonna have to start carrying a purse or something, if he keeps getting all emotional like this. “Sam…I…” And there’s a million things he wants to say, a million things he could say, but the most he can manage to force out is, “I know.” He squeezes Sam’s arm, lets his eyes carry the weight of his words. “I know.”

Sam’s face softens, and his brows draw together. He nods, leans and lets his forehead rest against Dean’s, and Dean leans back, relaxes for just a second. He breathes deep, soap and sweat and Sam, and when the moment passes, when he can swallow again, he lifts his head, clears his throat.

“I mean… I only opened the gate to Hell to get you back, you know. No big deal,” he says and smirks.

Sam pulls back and smiles, shakes his head. “I’m never hearing the end of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

There’s a rustling sound, footsteps through the grass, and Dean pulls back, turns his face to see. There’s a blond girl walking up to them, looking around like she’s not sure where she is. She’s tall and thin, pretty, and maybe just a little too pale to be a natural blond. Her face is smudged with dirt, and there’s dead grass clinging to her tangled hair. Her eyes are blue, and they look a little out of focus, dazed as she takes in the scenery around them.

“Is it… is it over?” she asks them. 

Dean looks around at the grass, the trees. He can hear the birds waking up, and the sky’s going pink at the edges. There’s nothing but the sound of his own thoughts in his head, Sam at his side. “Yeah. It’s over.”

“What… What are you doing here?” Sam asks.

The girl shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s like a dream. I heard this call…” she looks at the other people shuffling around. “I think we all did. And then… something happened.” She shakes her head again, folds her arms across her chest. “I can’t remember. But I think I was supposed to do something. I had…” she frowns. “A… vision? I think. Or maybe that was a dream, too.”

Dean looks at Sam, sees Sam looking back. _Psychic kid?_ he mouths, and Sam nods. Huh. They must’ve gotten visions about what was going to happen.

“What happened to that guy?” the girl asks, voice sounding weak, and Dean follows her finger to where she points.

“Gordon?” he asks, looking at Sam.

Sam looks tense, nods once.

“What? Did Hell take out an ad or something?” Dean asks and shakes his head. “Everybody and their brother is here.” Dean mutters, snorts. Sam looks at Dean sideways and Dean realizes what he just said. 

Someone else is coming, another silhouette, moving up behind the girl, this one thicker, more stout, and Dean thinks he could recognize Bobby anywhere. “You boys okay?” he asks, his voice carrying through the stillness. “And you, ma’am?” he asks, a little belatedly, looking sideways at the girl.

“We’re fine,” Dean answers. “The lady here is a little lost.”

“I’ll help the ones who need it, get ‘em started on their way home.” He starts to walk off, throws a look over his shoulder. “You boys… get some rest. Meet at my place in a day or so?”

Sam and Dean nod, then look at each other. There’s nothing to say, for a second, they just stare at each other and grin like idiots. Dean would feel a lot more ridiculous about it if they both hadn’t just died and come back. Twice.

As one, they turn, shoulders brushing as they walk through the remains of the graveyard, toward the Impala. 

“What was it like?” Sam asks. 

“You don’t remember?”

“Bits and pieces,” Sam says, shakes his head. “A lot of crazy images. I remember a feeling like peace… like I got a glimpse into the heart of everything. And a feeling like…” He looks at Dean, uncertain. “Mostly I remember…” he struggles for a second. “Feeling _you_. The two of us all mixed up together… like some kind of...” 

“Yeah,” Dean nods. “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter.” He pauses, words echoing in his ears. “When did that start sounding so dirty?” 

They both laugh, and Dean thinks for a second. “You wanna know what it was like? You ever see the end of ‘The Matrix’?”

“Yeah,” Sam nods, slowly catches on, and Dean can see him comparing the movie to what he can remember of being merged. “Where he finally gets it and he can see all the code around him?”

“Yeah! It was just like that,” Dean agrees.

Sam shakes his head, confused, spreads his hands inside his jacket pockets. “But what happened? I mean, not that I’m complaining, but we’re not supposed to still be here, right?”

“I don’t know,” Dean purses his lips, shakes his head. “I think when I separated the two strands, the two outcomes, I created a third reality, one that didn’t exist before. I _had_ to end everything or let the thing inside me do it—it was gonna happen, no matter what. But the change I made…” he looks around, nods his head. “I think it was enough to bring it all back.”

Sam’s staring at him like he’s lost his mind, and Dean flushes a little.

“Like I said, I don’t really know,” he shrugs. “I didn’t even understand it all, then.”

“You really were like a God, weren’t you?” Sam asks.

“I think so,” Dean nods. “But it wasn’t any fun. Not like you’d think it would be. No hot chicks, no throne, no feasts.” He hesitates a second, then adds, “No you. Total bust. Just a bunch of threads and knots. Where does that get fun?”

Sam just stares at him, shakes his head. “You’re a piece of work, Dean Winchester.”

“Yeah, well when this piece of work starts wanting to weave, he’ll head to the funny farm.” He thinks for a second, then adds with a slow smile, “Sam Winchester.”

Sam exhales, shifts inside his coat. “Winchester,” he echoes, murmuring the word like trying it on for size. “So,” he says, looking at Dean. “Where does that leave us?”

“Same place we’ve always been,” Dean says, and grins. Sam lights up like a candle, grins back.

“You’re different,” Sam says, like he’s not entirely sure what to make of Dean but he’s damned happy about whatever he sees.

“I feel different,” Dean says, pulling the keys to the Impala from his pocket. Stops and looks up at the sky for a second. “Like I know why I’m here. How many people get to know that, huh?”

“Dean…Not to rain on your parade, but you ended the omniverse.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, grinning. “But it was my choice.”

“Dean… you _ended_ the _omniverse_.”

“I know.” He beams. “Pretty cool, right?”

And even Sam can’t keep a straight face on that one.

“I mean, it wasn’t much fun, but for a little while there, I was one with the whole shebang. Every man, every woman, every child.” He pauses, thinks for a second then frowns. “Every freaky, alien octopus-headed thing.” He shrugs, then smiles. He doesn’t really understand it, but he feels content, complete.

“You’re still talking like a freak, you know,” Sam says, reaching for the door.

“Sammy, you go through something like that…” he says with a dramatic sigh. “It changes a man.”

Sam stops, eyes him over the roof of the car. “Right,” he says, smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. “So… you wanna fuck?”

“God yes,” Dean sighs, and slides into the car.

Some things never change.

*

Dean’s dead tired by the time they get to a motel. He figures being awake for almost two days, going through the emotional wringer and pulling off Ragnarok will do that to a guy. He feels worn out, rubbed smooth inside, quiet and peaceful. Sam doesn’t seem far behind him, and by the time they get inside the room and drop their bags, Dean’s almost ready to go back on what he said before they got in the car. The bed looks tempting in a way that has nothing to do with fucking Sam through it and more to do with Sam curled up beside him, and he turns to say so, finds Sam right there, bare inches away, those hazel eyes clear and deep as he puts his hands on Dean’s waist.

“Dean… you’re sure about this?”

It seems stupid. Utterly and deeply stupid, as he stands here with Sam’s hands on him, mouths within kissing range, Dean’s heart speeding up, aching with a strange kind of pain. It seems reckless and utterly fucked up to be this stupid over anyone, and here he is, almost six months gone, completely in love with his brother. 

His brother. Sam.

He feels something clamp tight around his heart, something deep, fraternal, that still wants to resist this. He thinks of Sammy, five years old and needing his big brother to protect him, and tries to imagine that child with the man standing in front of him, this man with his hands on Dean, making Dean’s heart pound, looking at Dean with so much love it leaves him feeling stunned.

“When you were little,” Dean says and his voice sounds, raw, scratched rough and deep. “There was this story I used to read to you. _The Lady or the Tiger_. You know it?”

Sam nods, watching Dean’s face intently. 

“You’d lay there in bed and listen, wide-eyed to the whole thing… I don’t think you even blinked. And after I’d finish reading it to you, every time, you’d ask me, ‘what did he choose?’”

Sam looks at him like he understands. “What did he choose?”

“The one that felt right,” Dean says, and kisses him. 

Sam kisses him back, hot mouth and soft tongue, fingers sketching patterns over Dean’s ribs and he feels like he’s falling off the edge of a cliff, knows it’s for real, for good this time. The tightness in his chest eases, fading and fleeting, and he plucks it free, lets it go. This is what they are now, this is _who_ they are, and he’d be an even bigger idiot if he tried to pretend it was anything else besides everything.

It’s different between them, this time. Almost like they’ve never done this before, like starting over again. In the hazy morning light that drifts through the motel curtains, they fall onto the bed together and kiss. They kiss forever, like two teenage kids making out, rolling across the coverlet and leaving it rumpled, twisting themselves halfway up in the blanket before rolling out again, bed sheet left wrinkled, one corner tugged free. They take turns leading, kissing slow and deep, hard and passionate, fingers tracing scars and lines, hands memorizing the flex and play of muscles beneath the skin. When Dean finally sinks inside Sam, buries himself deep, he feels Sam shiver underneath him, whisper Dean’s name in a voice Dean’s never heard before. 

Dean fucks him deep and hard, slow, sweet burn of urgency, answering Sam’s moans with every thrust of his body until Sam’s got his fingers buried in Dean’s spine, their bodies fused together, sweat and skin, so tight Dean can hardly tell where Sam ends and he begins. 

When he comes, it’s almost brutal it’s so hard and sharp. His cock pulses inside Sam and Sam seizes tight, shuddering and coming so hard all around Dean that Dean forgets his own name for a minute, milked dry by Sam’s shivering body, and Jesus _fuck_ it’s good.

By the end, they’re both breathing hard, sticky and trembling with exhaustion, and Dean drops his head down into the crook of Sam’s shoulder, arms falling out from underneath him. They’re silent for a little while, and Dean starts to drift, muscles relaxing, body sinking deeper into Sam’s. He’s spiraling down into sleep when Sam’s voice catches him, pulls him back.

“You know, destroying the omniverse didn’t make you any lighter.”

“Fuck off,” Dean mumbles, and Sam’s chuckle is the last thing he hears before he passes out completely.

* 

They don’t sleep the sleep of the just; they sleep the sleep of the _dead_ and when Dean finally drags his ass out of bed around 4pm, internal clock all screwed to hell, he feels like he’s got the worst hangover of his life. Which is so completely not fair. He mumbles about the unfairness of the universe for a few minutes until finally the universe tells him to take some fucking aspirin, have a glass of water and shut the fuck up—a message it delivers by giving him a headache so bad that he dry heaves into the toilet for fifteen minutes.

Still disgruntled, he takes the aspirin, downs two glasses of water and realizes he’s starving. Sam’s none the worse for the wear, apparently, and that just makes Dean grumpier at first, except Sam drives around until they find a _Fuddruckers_ and then makes sure that Dean gets exactly what he wants, plus more water and aspirin, so Dean forgives him. Eventually.

They drive to Bobby’s during the night instead of waiting for morning, and catch a nap there just before dawn, both of them curled on the mattress in the guest room.

Bobby finds them that way in the morning, and Dean’s confused when he blinks awake to find Bobby looking at them like he didn’t quite expect to see what he’s seeing.

“What is it?” Dean asks, runs a hand through his hair.

Bobby just shakes his head, walks back out. Dean sighs, pulls from the warmth of the bed and yanks on his clothes, and pads out to the dining room where Bobby’s sitting behind a desk, looking at a book.

“Okay,” Bobby says, looking up. “First tell me what the devil happened back there.”

Dean explains it all; from the cornfield and meeting the yellow eyed demon right up through ending the omniverse and coming back. He watches Bobby’s expressions switch between furious, disbelieving, annoyed, vaguely affectionate and occasionally sad.

“Don’t worry. I think my part in this is done. My powers are gone,” Dean says. “And we’re pretty sure Sam’s are gone too, which means all the psychic kid’s probably lost their power, too.”

Bobby’s nodding thoughtfully, eyes distant like he’s thinking of something else all together than what Dean’s saying. “So…” he says and exhales, looking up at Dean. “He’s really your brother.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, shoves his hands in his pockets. “When the thing happened where we…” he frowns. “I think it was like some geeky, Vulcan mind-meld thing. Anyway, yeah. No doubt about it.”

“Uh huh,” Bobby says, looking at him. “And you’re… you’re still…” he wrestles with the sentence for a second, then makes a motion with his hands.

Dean hunches his shoulders and ducks his head. “Uh… yeah.”

Bobby puts his arms down on his desk and shakes his head, trying to decide what to say. “Dean, your dad…”

“Dad’s dead, Bobby,” Dean says, raising his eyes and looking at the older man.

Bobby nods. 

“I know it’s messed up. I mean… if he’d been my brother my whole life… if we grew up together… but the way we met… by the time we found out… and then… when I lost him…” he shakes his head and wonders if he can finish a sentence. “There’s no going back.”

“Is it… Dean, are you okay with this?”

“I figure, the Winchester lifestyle and all, it couldn’t be simple,” he says. “Kinda par for the course for it to be messed up somehow.” He smiles a little. “But yeah. I feel pretty good, crazy as it sounds.”

Bobby wrestles for a few seconds more and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever seen Bobby so uncomfortable. “I had a cousin once,” he starts to say, shakes his head, then waves a hand through the air. “I guess… as long as you’re okay, Dean. But it’s… it’s gonna take some getting used to.”

Dean nods, and Bobby’s hesitating, like he’s working up to saying something else.

“Dean… you know you’re…” Bobby hesitates again, and Dean can tell when he speaks next, the words cost him a little. “You’re like a son to me,” he says, uncomfortable around the edges. Dean knows; it’s something they’ve never needed to talk about, just like Bobby’s like a dad, to him. And it scares Dean a little, because as straight a shooter as Bobby might be, he’s not one to talk much about how he feels. 

“But you’re _not_ my son… and I try to stay out of your business unless I think it’s gonna get you into trouble. But...” Bobby sighs, founders a bit and throws up his hands, abandons all attempts at reason. “Ah, the hell with it. Dean, you’re gonna give me a heart attack one day as it is, without making me watch you and your brother get all… cozy. Could you just… try not to act so… you know…” he makes another motion with his hands.

“What?” Dean asks.

“You know…” Bobby says, waits, and when Dean still doesn’t get it, he adds, quick and gruff, “Twitterpated.”

“We are _not_ twitterpated,” Dean protests, offended.

“Cut an old man a break, huh?” Bobby asks.

Dean nods, understands. “Yeah, Bobby. Okay.”

They’re silent for a minute, both of them a little uncomfortable, emotions a little too close to the surface.

Sam yawns and stretches in the doorway, breaking the moment. He walks in and stands next to Dean, his arm just brushing against Dean’s. “We about ready?” he asks.

Dean looks over, up at him and smiles, and he can hear Bobby sigh. Bobby doesn’t throw up his hands and leave the room, though, and Dean figures that’s a good sign.

*

The sun is high in the sky when they hit the road, dazzling as it reflects off the pavement. Summer’s hitting quick and hard, and Dean starts to sweat as soon as he slides inside the Impala, t-shirt sticking damp against his back.

Sam’s got the window rolled all the way down, face turned into the sun as they take off down the highway. He smiling as he stares out the open window, watching the world fly by. After a few minutes, he sits back in the seat and strips his t-shirt off over his head. He looks over at Dean and grins when Dean can’t tear his eyes away.

“So,” Sam says, balling up the shirt in his lap and laying one arm along the top of the door. His hair is tousled, whipping in the wind, and he’s already getting tan. “Where are we heading?”

“Straight to the backseat,” Dean says, still eyeing Sam’s bare chest, “if you stay looking like that.”

“It’s ninety degrees outside, Dean. We’ll fry to death.”

“We’d just come right back.”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, looking at the back seat speculatively. “We already died twice. Third time might be the charm.”

“Wuss,” Dean smirks.

Sam smirks back, throws his shirt at Dean. “So where are we going, seriously?”

“I was thinking Cancun,” Dean says and grins at Sam’s amazed expression. “We saved the world, killed the bad guy. I figure we deserve a vacation.”

“Yeah,” Sam says and laughs. “All right.”

“And after that…” Dean says, more seriously as he chews at his bottom lip. He hesitates and starts over. “I know you said a while back, this isn’t the life you wanted. And I thought… maybe you might wanna go back to school… or something. So I was thinking… after Cancun, maybe we could…”

“Buy a house? Live in the suburbs?” Sam asks, looking at him oddly.

“Yeah,” Dean nods, shifting uncomfortably in the seat. “You know. If you wanted.”

Sam’s quiet for so long that Dean finally risks a glance at him.

“Could we get a house in Sweden?” Sam asks. “You know, they let siblings get married there.”

Dean twitches so hard that he almost wrecks the car.

“Dude,” Sam says, smacking him in the shoulder. “Breathe. I’m messing with you.”

And Dean really feels like he ought to have retort, maybe even pull over and kick Sam’s ass for that stunt, but by the time he stops freaking out and his brain starts working again, Sam’s talking again.

“You know,” he says, sitting back in the seat. He runs a hand under his chin and stares out the window, serious, now. “When I was running all that time… All I could think was how I wanted to go back to a normal life.” He chuckles like he’s not quite sure what’s funny. “But now… I can’t even imagine it. Doing this…” Sam thinks for a second and then nods, turns his head to look at Dean. “It feels like… what we’re _supposed_ to do, you know?”

“So… you mean you wanna carry on the family business? Saving people? Hunting things?” Dean asks, grinning.

“For a while, anyway. I take it you’re okay with that?” Sam asks, arching an amused brow at Dean.

“I’m _so_ okay with that,” Dean says.

Dean feels something change between them, vibe going more serious, suddenly, and he tenses up. Sam’s looking at Dean with all his attention now, and it’s making Dean want to squirm.

“What?”

“What do _you_ want, Dean?” Sam asks, intent and soft, like he’s really curious. “Has anyone ever even asked you that?”

“I don’t want anything,” Dean says, eyes on the road.

“Everybody wants something.”

He knows this music; dodge, dance, avoid. He’s been doing it so long it’s second nature. “You know, once you’ve been one with the omniverse, everything else seems kinda petty.” It’s true, in a lot of ways. He’s not sure the world will ever look the same to him again, or the moon, the sun, the stars. Even being with Sam like this, _together_ like this, doesn’t seem nearly as big a deal… as _bad_ as it did, before. But it’s not an answer, and he knows Sam damned well knows it. Hopes maybe, just this once, Sam’ll let it go.

But Sam just keeps looking at him, shakes his head. “No, Dean. What do you _want_?”

Pushy little fucker. If Sam had asked him that a few months ago, he’d have had half a dozen answers right off the top of his head—Sammy, mom, dad, a night in the Playboy mansion—but now… Sam beside him, open road ahead of them, he doesn’t feel like there’s anything missing. And it’s so damned cheesy it makes him wanna puke. 

Finally he just shrugs. “Got everything I want,” he mutters.

He can see Sam’s smile grow out of the corner of his eye, knows if he turned to look it would fucking blind him. Can’t help smiling, himself.

They roar down the highway as the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, and Sam reaches over, cranks up _Freebird_ on the radio. The wind blows through Dean’s hair, and the sky is wide and blue, universe stretching out forever in front of them.

  
FINIS

  
  



End file.
